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THE 

TDINGBAT OF ^RCADT 



By 
MARGUERITE WILKINSON 



New Voices 
Bluestone 



THE 

•DINGBAT 

of 
tAR CAD r 



BY 

MARGUERITE WILKINSON 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1922 

All rights reserved 



n 



n 












Printed in the United States of America 






Copyright, 1921 
By CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Copyright, 1922 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and printed. Published, March, Jg22 



CONDE NAST PRESS GREENWICH, CONN. 



m 22 1922 
©C1.A6592'I3 



T'his is a book of memories. It tells 
how Jim and I traveled on singing rivers 
and blue bays in The Dingbat of Arcady^ 
The Royal 'Dingbat^ and The Long Canoe 
and on roads, brown, yellow, and white, 
in Frankie Ford and Rover Chug-chug. 
It is a most personal record of small, but 
sprightly, adventures. It is dedicated to 
my cousin, Poultney Bigelow, the only 
other vagabond in my family, and to 
his wife, Lilian Bigelow. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

(J^Y MOST cordial thanks for 
permission to reprint this mate- 
rial in this book are due to The 
Editor of Scribners Magazine ^ 
who first gave most of it to the 
public. 



[I] 



[I] 

To LIVE thirty years without ever feeling 
the full energy of the sun, the rigor of wind, 
the sweet instancy of rain — that, you may 
say, would be a tragedy. Or perhaps you will 
say that it would be impossible. But it is 
not impossible. It was my tragedy. I did 
not know sun and wind and rain because I 
had always taken them for granted. My 
body had suffered and enjoyed them dully 
and half-consciously, being carefully pro- 
tected from infancy to the years of indis- 
cretion by a house, clothing, and the customs 
of good society. In a spiritual sense I had 
Hved most of my life indoors. To be sure, I 
was acquainted with nature — spelled with a 
capital and put inside quotation marks. 
There is a great gulf, however, between 
acquaintance and friendship. I could look 
back to the days of my childhood when the 
sane delights of dust and puddles were well 
known to my small feet in spite of parental 
prohibitions. I enjoyed a beautiful view when 
it was not pointed out to me and I had sense 
enough to dislike people who came and 



The Dingbat of Arcady 



"quacked beside me" in the woods after the 
manner described by Rupert Brooke. In 
quiet fields I was often touched by beauty 
that I did not analyze. Times came when a 
great congregation of the clouds in the wild 
air currents high above me thrilled me with 
the marvel of a storm. But greater things 
than these I had not found in nature, and 
deeper things than these I had not known 
when I was thirty years of age. I knew people 
much better than I knew Nature, who has 
been the condition of their life from the 
beginning, who is the everlasting enemy and 
the everlasting friend. 

Since I was thirty years old I have been 
intimate with the open world. I have felt 
the sun putting the scent of sunburn upon 
my body and the color of life into my mind. 
My shoulders have been thrust against the 
wind with a hardy and joyful will to over- 
come it; my skin has tingled with it; my lungs 
have been greatened with breezes. The rain 
has cooled my forehead and throat and made 
moist tendrils of my hair and softened my 
voice. I have not killed lions in the jungle 
as Roosevelt did, nor suffered in the polar 
seas as Shackleton did. But I have known 
the chimeras of darkness; I have borne the 



The Dingbat of Arcady 5 

rasping hardships of heat and cold and pain. 
I have been hungry for several days at a 
time and thirsty hour after hour. I have 
been in the open without even a tent for 
shelter week after week. I have learned to 
strive for that conquest of nature in myself 
which begins with realization and ends with 
the sublimation of all the forces of life for 
ends most wise and serene. Without that 
conquest Nature is the everlasting enemy; 
with it she becomes the everlasting friend. 
I have tried to let the sun strike fiery white 
through work and play, to let the wind blow 
clean and strong across stale ways, to let 
the fertile rain fall insistently upon life's 
barrenness. 

I may have learned some of the secrets 
of the open world. They tell themselves 
again to all that know them in the eyes and 
voices and gestures of others that know them 
and in the ways of their minds. I wish that 
all mankind were of this free masonry. It 
is sorrowful to realize that when a person 
who is ruddy and athletic either in body or 
in spirit enters a subway train the sensitive 
must feel a shock of surprise. It is as if a 
sunflower had entered. 

What if a great wind, smelling of salt seas, 



The Dingbat of Arcady 



or of pine woods, or of a sage mesa, were to 
go roaring through the car, stealing all hats 
away, whipping out hairpins, loosening collars, 
carrying us all with it to the shores of the 
ocean, or to unbounded forests, or to un- 
dulating prairies and casting us down upon the 
earth forspent with a passion of surprise? 
What if a great silver rain descended upon us 
from skies the color of gentians, washing us, 
caressing us, cooling our fevers, releasing us 
from all tension? What if the sun came out 
upon us afterward with such an inspiriting 
gladness that we all danced together over 
boundless open spaces, lifting our hands and 
arms toward heaven, forgetful of the world? 
Is it not true that beauty and happiness would 
come upon us? While the rapture lasted we 
should be transfigured and we should keep 
the memory of that transfiguration with us 
always. For the soul, that moves forever 
toward God as the summit of life and the 
goal of living, takes the first step best, per- 
haps, where life began and still begins, in 
nature; and passes on from storm to storm 
and from peace to peace, from swollen cloud 
to cloud and from rainbow to rainbow, from 
shadow to lovelier shadow and from light 
to everlasting light. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 



This may be why I am moved to tell of 
my adventures in the open world with my 
husband. I am not so devoid of humor that 
I can think of myself as a discoverer of the 
anguish and ardor of life out of doors. I 
know that I am not even a pioneer. This trail 
of the mind is worn smooth by thousands 
who made it. But nobody else has traveled 
on it with my body, my mind, my heart. 
As I see it, it is unique. The joy of the way 
comes back into my consciousness again and 
again and thrusts itself upward through many 
intellectual disciplines, asking for a chance 
to be spoken with my hps. I am like the 
proselyte of a new faith, eager to relate my 
experience. Those who dislike such confes- 
sions should lay down this book. 

My first chance to go out into the open with 
my husband came after a long winter of dis- 
content, after a sharp struggle with poverty, 
after a period of sorrow and anxiety. Jim 
is a teacher. He had no summer work that 
year. It was necessary to live, somehow, 
until school began again in the autumn. 
Poets, also, have to keep body and soul to- 
gether in June, July and August. We had 
very little to live on. We longed for rest, 
change, adventure. We could think of nothing 



8 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

that would cost less than two months out of 
doors. To be sure, I had never done any 
camping. I had never even lived on a farm. 
But Jim knew the whimsical windings of 
rivers and he understood boats. We decided 
to spend our vacation floating down a river. 
We were living in the West at the time, and, 
for some reason unknown to us even now, 
we chose the Willamette River in Oregon. 

Anybody who looks on the map can find 
it, a short stream flowing through Oregon 
into the Columbia. But though I shock the 
geographers, I must tell them that for me no 
map can fix it in place. For me it is a mystic 
stream flowing past a certain saw-mill at 
Albany, Oregon, past the place where it 
slides into the Columbia, down the coast 
and into San Diego Bay, thence under the 
continent, emerging in the Saint John River 
in Canada, flowing through Lake Champlain, 
across the Hudson, under the Atlantic, min- 
gling with the rivulets of Devon and joining 
the Esk in Scotland. More than that, if I 
live, I shall fancy that I find it flowing under 
the next river on which we travel. It has cut 
a channel in the deep places of my spirit. 

Our trip down the Willamette lasted seven 
weeks by the clock, but by the tick of our 



The Dinghat of Arcady 



feelings it has never ended. Sometimes when 
I am at rest and retrospective I can close my 
eyes and see the sinuous curving of that little 
river, the mossy sides of the great firs and 
maples near it, the strips of singing shingle 
that made tunes for us under our boat as we 
slipped down the stream over the shallow 
ripples, the banks of clean sand where we 
made our fires at night and sat watching 
the thin strands of gray smoke unwinding 
themselves upward. 

The trip began at Albany, Oregon, whither 
we had gone expecting to buy a flat-bottomed 
rowboat. We found none of the right sort 
for sale at a price which we could afford to 
pay, and were obliged to build our own craft, 
which was best, after all. For new ventures 
new vehicles. 

The building of a boat would seem to be 
a difficult and complicated operation, but to 
the simple all things are simple. We made 
our task as easy as possible by working in 
the open air, in front of a lumber mill, on 
the bank of the river. Our lumber — pine 
flooring — was cut to dimension for us in the 
mill. Near us, while we worked, were piles 
of sweet yellow sawdust like grated cheese 
ready for the dinner of a giant, heaps of honey- 



lo The Dingbat of Arcady 

colored shavings, like the fragrant curls of 
a giant's daughter, and bundles of planks 
smooth as warm-hued ivory. The mill was 
owned by a noble old Titan who had gone 
out to Oregon in his youth and brought up a 
family of sons to match the land. In their com- 
pany we worked happily for three days, listen- 
ing to the whine and drone of the saws in the mill 
and to the good American voices of the work- 
men. On the third day we finished our boat. 

The actual building of her was done in 
a day and a half. She was fourteen feet long 
and two and a half feet wide and the shape 
of a cigar box, save that there was an angle 
at the bow and another at the stern where 
the floor tilted upward to the top. Not a 
curved line in her whole structure! Her sides 
were fourteen-inch planks, fairly stout. Her 
floor was of cheap pine boards fitted together 
in the usual way with grooves and ridges. 
They were laid on at right angles to the sides. 
The two ends, where the floor sloped up, 
were covered with planks and one plank 
at each end could be lifted out and set back 
at will. Thus we had two cupboards in which 
to store clothing, food, blankets, tools, kitchen 
utensils, and the small typewriter that is to 
us what Mary's lamb was to Mary. 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 1 1 

While the boat was building the big men 
in the mill showed much kindly interest. 
They would stand around at the lunch hour 
smoking malignant tobacco and giving us the 
most benevolent advice. I was a problem 
to them — a woman who could pound nails 
and was willing to go on a wild expedition of 
the kind that we were planning. They would 
watch me curiously as I filled the grooves 
in the rough boards with white lead and fitted 
them into place. They were almost as much 
interested as we were when, on the second 
day, at noon, our craft was structurally com- 
plete. It remained to make her water-tight 
and to paint her. 

Some of the men advised us to fill the cracks 
with putty. Others suggested pitch and 
oakum. In order to be on the safe side and 
in order to accept all proffered suggestions 
with obliging courtesy, we used all three. 
When we thought that we had done all that 
was necessary we slapped on a coat of sky- 
blue paint, a rich, conspicuous shade (one 
might say ''vulgar-rich'' in this connection) 
and left her to dry over night. The next day 
we were to launch her and begin our cruise. 

The friendly men asked us to let the launch- 
ing be at noon so that they might see us off. 



1 2 The Dingbat of Arcady 

So Jim spent the morning putting the finish- 
ing touches on a pair of rough wooden oar- 
locks whittled out of two small blocks of 
pine, and arguing with me about an appro- 
priate name for our floating palace. We 
wanted her name to be both romantic and 
humorous. It happened that Jim's favorite 
slang word at the time was "dingbat" of 
Sunday-comic-supplement origin. To him it 
expressed the final degree of insignificance. 
He remarked casually that we ought not to 
be disturbed about a name for such a poor 
little "dingbat*' of a boat! Whereupon we 
suddenly agreed that she should be called 
"The Dingbat" and that her port was Arcady. 
Hence, "The Dingbat of Arcady." 

This decided, the choice of a fluid suitable 
for her christening troubled us. Champagne, 
we knew, was the conventional thing. In 
those days it could be had for its proper price. 
But we could not afford to treat the eight 
or ten friendly men and to favor the inanimate 
'Dingbat with such an expensive drink while 
permitting the animate palate to suffer thirst 
— that would have been insulting. Any cheap 
drink of the hard variety would have been 
vulgar for the christening of a boat hailing 
from Arcady. Finally we decided to christen 



The Dingbat of Arcady 13 

her with the juice of Oregon cherries, than 
which none are more delicious, and to add 
a huge bag of them to the dinner of our friends. 
At twelve o'clock of the third day of our 
stay in Albany Jim nailed the wooden oar- 
locks into place, gave me the oars to carry, 
and then, with the assistance of the workmen, 
picked up The Dingbat of Arcady and carried 
her down the pebbly bank to the water. 
Everybody helped. Even the old Titan must 
lend a hand. Jim got in and took the oars. 
I climbed over the stern and sat down in 
my place on top of the pantry cupboard. 
The current caught us. We were off. We had 
begun a new life that is not yet ended. The 
men on the bank waved and cheered. As we 
looked back from midstream they seemed as 
beautiful as trees, standing there in their 
rough strength. They were John Masefield's 

"Oregon men of six-feet-seven 
With backs from Atlas and hearts from 
Heaven." 

By this time all who are wise in the ways 
of boats will be wondering whether The 
Dingbat leaked. Of course she did. Slow drops 
oozed up through unsuspected interstices 
around knots in the planks. Small rillets 



14 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

trickled in at the seams and ran across the 
floor. While Jim directed our course easily 
enough with the oars, I worked much harder, 
bailing with a small saucepan and great de- 
termination. In spite of all that I could do 
the water got ahead of me. I learned that I 
could not hope to keep my feet dry. I took 
off my shoes and stockings. Jim followed my 
example. It is more comfortable and wiser 
to sit all day with bare feet in a couple of 
inches of water than it is to get chilblains 
from enforced intimacy with wet leather. I 
might remark, parenthetically, that we kept 
our shoes and stockings in the pantry cup- 
board for most of the seven weeks of the 
cruise, wearing them only when we entered 
towns or visited farms or met our fellow 
man. The boat leaked for three weeks. By 
the time she was water-tight we had lost all 
interest in shoes and stockings for their own 
sakes. We respected them and wore them 
merely as a part of good manners. 

The Dingbat leaked so badly on that first 
afternoon of our trip that I thought it would 
be necessary to call all hands to the pumps. 
It was. Jim pulled her to the shore while 
I bailed rapidly. We lifted her on her side 
and poured the water out. Then we put 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 5 

pitch and oakum into the perceptible cracks 
— the putty proved to be a delusion and a 
snare — and pushed her out into the water 
and went on again. The process had to be 
repeated several times that day. But we 
were not annoyed. The novelty of the experi- 
ence was captivating. The cruise had begun. 
That very night we were to sleep on the 
ground. I wondered what it would be like. 



[II] 



[11] 

ff^HEN I was a little girl I despised the 
princess in the fairy tale who could not rest 
easily on her seven quilts of silk and down 
because, underneath the last and lowest of 
them, a rose petal lay crumpled. Now I 
have compassion for her. For those who 
recline on sevenfold silk and down spread 
between themselves and rugged reality never 
rest at all. If there be no crumpled petal, 
the thought of one suffices to disturb them. 
Pillowed upon a softness that thwarts or 
denies reahty we may have witless slumber 
and illusory dreams, but valid repose is for 
those who do not fear that which is hard. 
Our rest is in reahty. 

Our peace is in reality. This thought I 
have found growing near the gnarled roots 
of trees that have sheltered me when I have 
slept in the woods at night. I have found it, 
also, flourishing in the hard sand at the heavy 
ocean's edge. Whenever and wherever I 
have slept upon the ground at night I have 
caught glimpses of it by the light of the first 
stars. And I have looked at it again in the 



20 The Dingbat of Arcady 

morning as soon as a new dawn has made it 
possible to see thoughts growing. I have tried 
to transplant it into my mind. 

Whenever and wherever I have found this 
thought growing I have found rest. The 
ground, the underlying reality for our bodies, 
that from which there is no falling away, is 
the best of all beds. It is the bed of heroes 
before they die in battle and find rest in it 
forever; it is the bed of hermits who keep 
vigil for the souFs sake; it is the bed of the 
quaint company of the poets who wander 
up and down the highways of the world for- 
ever, seeking the tunes that will echo longest 
in the minds of men and the images that 
men's tears will never wash away. The 
ground is the bed on which Christ slept in 
the wilderness. It is the clean refuge of the 
poor. Resting on it makes the body firm, 
the mind joyful. 

To find this firmness and joy, to achieve 
this rest upon reality, nobody needs to endure 
more than all manhood and womanhood 
should be able to endure. Nobody needs to 
be miserably uncomfortable night after night. 
Times will come when no amount of foresight 
can prevent a certain amount of discomfort. 
But this humorous hardness merely sym- 



The Dingbat of Arcady 21 

bolizes that discipline of heart and mind with- 
out which we reach no intellectual or spiritual 
reality. As a rule, after the first two or three 
nights spent in the open, aching bones are 
either a myth or a stupidity. It seems strange 
to me now that I hved thirty years in a world 
of groves and wild skies before I ever spent 
a night on the ground under the stars. 

Our first night on the ground was spent in 
a grove of mighty maples. We made The 
'Dingbat fast to a sapling on the bank and, 
after a hot supper previously purchased in 
Albany and cooked over a fire near the water's 
edge, Jim set about the task of bed-making. 
First we carried our blankets and two long 
strips of heavy canvas up into the grove. 
Then we sought a good bit of ground. At 
length, quite near the edge of the grove, we 
found a huge maple with a stretch of level 
earth under it about eight feet square and 
sloping away from the foot of the tree. The 
branches above were in full leaf — a shelter 
not to be despised in time of rains and a 
grateful shade in hot weather. 

I leaned against the trunk that we promptly 
christened **our tree'* and watched while 
Jim loosened the earth of the level space with 
a hatchet. He made a hollow in the middle 



22 The Dingbat of Arcady 

of the stretch of loose earth. This is an essen- 
tial of comfort in a bed on the ground, for 
in it the hips can rest. A perfectly flat surface, 
even when it is well covered with blankets, 
is the enemy of rest for most human beings. 
The spine is wearied when it is held at an 
angle all night. Jim and I had heard that 
cowboys in the desert dug such slight hollows 
for their beds at night. We did likewise and 
were glad. 

This done, in about five minutes, Jim spread 
out one piece of heavy canvas on the open 
space. Then he laid half of another twelve- 
foot strip on top of it, leaving about six feet 
by six to be turned up over the top in case of 
rain. These strips of canvas prevented the 
ground-damp from coming up to our bodies 
rapidly. The new camper is frequently sur- 
prised to learn that the chill which goes 
through him to the bone comes oftenest from 
the ground under him, not from the air around 
him. On the canvas Jim laid woolen blankets. 
On these he put a double cotton blanket, — 
the "sleep-between" used instead of sheets. 
This could be washed with little difficulty 
and served as protection against the dust 
that always gathers in camping blankets. On 
top of this were more woolen coverings. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 23 

We had no tent, for we had been too poor 
to buy one. We had nothing between us and 
the heavens, nothing but the broad, deeply- 
cleft leaves of our tree. On one side even these 
didnothidethesky. On that side there was not 
even a mist to mask the street lamps of the 
eternal cities above us as a light fog from the 
harbor sometimes veils the stars that are New 
York at night. Climbing through that aper- 
ture in the branches on rays of starlight, 
my vision rose into the everlasting blue. 

There was nothing between us and the 
voice of the river to deaden the long sound 
of its chanting, nothing but the placid air 
through which that chanting came. My lips 
moved with a desire to shape words to the 
tune of it and I gathered vague syllables 
together into heaps in my mind as I listened, 
only to throw them all away again at last. 
It had to be a song without words. 

There was nothing between us and the nerv- 
ous life that plays sensuously upon the surface 
of the earth. The ground whispered when an 
insect moved over it or in it. The hush of 
night was broken, occasionally, by the pass- 
ing of the little night-hunters of the wood 
scurrying across leaves and twigs to and from 
their hidden homes, talking with their quick 



24 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

feet. Sometimes something fell. Then silence 
closed in again, deeper than before. The air, 
near the earth and near my face, was moist 
and cool and full of sober fragrances. I 
wanted to stay awake all night and get the 
uttermost joy out of the experience. But 
even as I resolved to keep watch over the 
earth with the stars I lost them. 

In the woods, although I wake earlier than 
when I am at home, I usually wake more 
gradually and beautifully. If the grove be 
thick or the day cloudy, my first awareness 
of waking may be the half-conscious answer 
of the mind to the calling of birds near at 
hand that seem, in my dreamy state, to be 
very far away. At first I lie perfectly quiet 
with no desire to move a finger, opening my 
eyes for an instant from time to time to see 
the robust trunks of trees define themselves 
and emerge from vanishing mist or kindly 
shadow. Then I reaHze that the tip of my 
nose is cold. I lift a hand to my hair and feel 
that it is heavy with dew. I turn stiffly. 
I give conscious attention to the bird-song. 
One by one more trees add themselves to 
the number of those that I can see. A shaft 
of keen light falls through arching branches 



The Dingbat of Arcady 25 

upon the floor of the grove. The grass, if 
there be any, becomes visible, spangled and 
stiff. If there be flowers near my bed, I notice 
them. Then it is time to get up. 

On this first morning of the trip it happened 
in this way, the waking and the rising. I 
walked slowly down to the river, getting 
used to my legs almost as if I were learning 
to walk. The stream was smooth from bank 
to bank as if the ripples still slept. It steamed 
with a light, white mist. An evanescent foam 
or scum clung to the small reeds near the 
shore and in quiet places bubbles floated. 
A fish jumped. The sun stared at me ruddy 
and imperturbable from his low house in the 
East. I saluted him. Then I plunged into 
the river and swam rapidly for a minute or 
two. After the swim I gathered bits of dry 
wood, barkless and bleached, like the bones 
of a tree, and made a fire and cooked break- 
fast. My mood that had moved to an ex- 
pectant andante was now attuned to a happy 
allegro. The day had begun. 

On the next night of the trip, and on several 
succeeding nights, although there was as 
much beauty, there was more hardship, for 
it rained. On our second night out we made 
our camp in another maple grove farther down 



26 The Dingbat of Arcady 

the river. When we had been asleep only a 
short time we were awakened by a restless, 
unfamiliar noise, the shy, slow, disturbed 
fluttering of the top branches of the maples 
shifting in an intermittent breeze and the 
first gentle pattering of rain upon their leaves. 
The thought of a shower roused us, for, as I 
have said, we had no tent. We put all of our 
clothing under the canvas folded on top of 
our blankets. Then we waited, wondering 
how soon the rain would fall upon our 
faces. 

For quite a long time not a drop of water 
came through to fall upon us. The leaves 
held the first fallen drops until their surfaces 
were thoroughly wet. Then the shower be- 
came too heavy for them and they began 
to drip. It was like William H. Davies' lyric, 
"The Rain," exactly Hke it. 

"I hear leaves drinking rain; 

I hear rich leaves on top 
Giving the poor beneath 

Drop after drop; 
*Tis a sweet noise to hear 
Those green leaves drinking near." 

From layer to layer of leaves the water fell 
and then splashed on our canvas. The outside 



The "Dingbat of Arcady 27 

of it became wet but it was an effectual pro- 
tection for our blankets. We had to choose 
between keeping our faces out in the open 
and keeping them dry. We decided to let 
them get wet. In the morning I looked like 
pussy with wet fur. My hair was so drenched 
that I had to wring it out, but otherwise I 
was warm and dry. W^e put on sweaters and 
hunted for wood dry enough for a fire. We 
found it under fallen trunks or in the hollows 
of trees and boiled our matutinal coffee while 
occasional drops of rain sputtered against the 
hot sides of the pot. 

Since those days we have learned to carry 
calcium carbide which, when dropped into 
water, makes a gas that burns well and will 
dry twigs for a fire in no time. In this way 
we can cook in the wettest weather. We have 
learned, also, to dig a V-shaped trench, in- 
verted, at the head of the bed so that water 
running down the slope on a rainy night will 
drain off at the sides instead of flowing down 
one*s neck. But we were novices in those far 
away days and had not learned how very 
comfortable it is possible to be out of doors 
even in rainy weather. Nevertheless we were 
quite cheerful. We were hke children in our 
enjoyment of the thought that we had slept 



28 The Dingbat of Arcady 

out all night in the rain and cooked breakfast 
in the rain successfully. 

When rainy day followed rainy day and 
rainy night followed rainy night for the better 
part of two weeks I must admit that we were 
not always cheerful. Once Jim and I agreed 
that we would keep a fire all night. I was to 
stay awake and guard it until twelve o'clock. 
He would have the second watch. He needed 
rest first for he had been rowing all day. And 
what woman is not a sentry? But when twelve 
o'clock came Jim slumbered as deeply as one 
of the logs he should have been chopping into 
lengths for the fire, and, although he is usually 
the best sport in the world, I simply could not 
rouse him. There was nothing for it but to 
turn in and let the fire die. Through all the 
rain we kept well. Not a twinge of rheuma- 
tism, not a hint of a cold, not a sign of a sore 
throat did either of us have though we 
traveled all day in the leaky 'Dingbat and 
slept at night in blankets that finally got 
somewhat damp since there was never any 
sun in which to sun them. 

Then came a day when we saw the sun 
again, hot and glorious, a day of emeralds 
and diamonds. In the strong light of that 
surprising sun we saw that everything we 



The Dingbat of Arcady 29 

owned was muddy. We must have a washing 
day at once while the sun stayed out. But 
we needed to go on down the river, too, for 
we needed certain kinds of food that could 
be bought only in towns. How could we do 
our washing and travel at the same time? 
That was the question. 

Jim answered it. He bored a hole in the 
cover plank at each end of The Dingbat, In 
these two holes he inserted sticks about five 
feet tall. From the top of one to the top of 
the other he tied a stout cord. That was to 
be the drying line. Then, while The Dingbat 
floated on down stream, carefully guided by 
Jim, I leaned over the stern with a cake 
of laundry soap in one hand and a dingy 
garment in the other, rubbing and scrubbing 
to my heart's content. We left a thin trail 
of suds in our wake. We flaunted personal 
banners in the sun. 

For a time the breezes were the only ones 
to see them. But at noon, while a large part 
of the wash was still on the line, a canoe, 
with two men in it, passed us, going up stream. 
They took several long looks before they 
could quite believe what they saw, — a sky- 
blue Dingbat^ two flushed travelers, a clothes- 
line like those that hang between tenements 



30 The Dingbat of Arcady 

in the city! Then they roared mirthful greet- 
ings and asked us whither we were going. 
It embarrassed us to remember that we did 
not exactly know. We had not bothered to 
decide on a destination. 

"To Astoria?" they shouted. 

"Don't know!'' we answered. 

"I guess not/' they answered, decidedly; 
"it'd take you a year in that — boat!" 

It was at that moment, I think, that I 
became aware of my deep and undying affec- 
tion for The Dingbat, We never know how 
much we love our friends until they are sub- 
jected to the derision of the world. And it 
was only a few moments later, when we left 
the bright canoe behind and rounded a bend 
of the river, that we found a lovelier destina- 
tion than Astoria, a place so beautiful that 
it seemed as if it might be The Dingbat's 
home port of Arcady. 

It was merely a strip of shelving pebbly 
beach with a clump of birches white in the 
dazzle of sun and flutter of air. A current 
flowed past the sandy edge of the beach 
swiftly enough to keep it clean. A virginal 
freshness of atmosphere made the place seem 
delightful to us who had struggled so long 
with rain in the thick, dark groves. In all 



The Dingbat of Arcady 3 1 

directions was wild, untouched country, show- 
ing no signs of the presence of man. What a 
place for a rest and a change and a frolic! 
It was excessively hot. We decided to row 
on later in the day when sundown made 
the air cooler. Why not stop and wash 
blankets? We did. We put on bathing suits, 
went to work, and to play in that gracious 
water. 

W^e had a happy afternoon. I stepped into 
the river and sat down comfortably where 
the current flowed past on a level with my 
shoulders, ducking from time to time to let 
it have the fun of tugging at my hair. It is 
inherent in living streams to desire to pull 
all flexible things. I washed the "sleep- 
between** and Jim hung it on the bushes to 
dry. Then I gave myself up to joy in the 
weather. I was wild with delight of sun and 
blue water and solitude. One swim was not 
enough. All afternoon I ran in and out of 
the rollicking current. Jim washed the boat 
and rested under the birches. At five o'clock 
we folded our clean, dry things, got into a 
clean, dry Dingbat and went on to finish our 
day*s cruise and find a camp for the night. 
We were to travel until about eight o'clock 
to make up for the afternoon of leisure. We 



32 The Dingbat of Arcady 

did not know, then, that it would have been 
wiser to remain where we were. 

But soon after we were launched and float- 
ing down with the current again I felt a 
strange, drowsy pain waking in my feet. I 
paid no attention to it at first. But it per- 
sisted. A sudden twinge when I moved one 
of them clamored for attention. I looked at 
my bare feet and saw that something quite 
unprecedented was happening to them. They 
were rosy purple in color and in form they 
resembled the chubby feet of Michelangelo's 
cherubs. I tried to stand and discovered that 
it had become an agony simply to bend them 
at the ankles. I sat down in limp distress. 
It was an exceedingly bad case of sunburn, 
the result of my immoderate reveling in sun 
and water. 

It was perfectly evident that we could not 
pitch camp for the night anywhere where 
walking would be necessary and that we had 
better stop at the first flat beach. When we 
found a suitable place my feet had already 
swollen to about twice their normal size and 
it was impossible for me to walk. Jim had 
to lift me out of the boat and set me down 
on the shore like a bundle. I was suflFering 
intensely. We had no curative lotion with us — 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady j,'^ 

nothing but a little lard left over from our 
cooking. Jim made a bed on the beach and 
put me on it with my melancholy feet up- 
lifted on a suitcase and the perennially useful 
typewriter. It was long before I could sleep 
and only toward morning did the pain ease 
somewhat and permit a few hours of rest. 

I was awakened early by a shadow directly 
over my face and looked up into the counte- 
nance, humorous and pointed, the two beady 
eyes and sharp snout of a little pig. To show 
him that I was not good to eat and did not 
intend to be eaten I said "Hello!" Whereupon 
he replied with an exquisitely modulated 
**0i, oi, oi," like the same Greek syllable 
without the rough breathing. After this polite 
salutation he trotted away. But for me he 
was symbolic. Never since then have I let 
intemperate delight lead to sunburned feet. 

By the time they were well again we had 
succeeded in stopping all of the leaks in The 
Dingbat with pitch and oakum and we some- 
times found it convenient to sleep on the 
floor of her while she rocked quietly all night 
on the lonely waters of that little river. When 
evening came we would tie her securely by 
her long rope to some sapling on shore and 
then let her float in a cove or shallow, or on 



34 The Dingbat of Arcady 

the port side of a log-boom. When we first 
thought of sleeping in her in this way we cov- 
ered the floor with branches from firs, laying 
our blankets on top of them. They made a 
fairly good bed, though less comfortable than 
the ground in the forests. Then, one day, 
we met a farmer who told us that there might 
be woodticks in the fir branches and offered 
us hay for the bed instead. Woodticks are 
not desirable companions, so we threw the 
fir branches overboard and accepted the hay. 
We got large bundles of it from his little red 
barn. We offered to pay for it, but he would 
not take a cent. It was only hay, he said. 
We spread it out gratefully where the fir 
branches had been. We rested on it fragrantly 
while we watched the moon rise in an un- 
veiled sky and light the water with a silver 
pathway for a spirit like Christ. . . . 

By day we traveled slowly down stream 
with the current, shifting from one side of 
the stream to the other as the current shifted, 
crossing long strips of shingle where the water 
was only a few inches deep. Over this shingle 
The Dingbat passed pleasantly enough for she 
was perfectly flat underneath. As an Irish- 
man said to us, "Sure, she would float in a 



The Dingbat of Arcady 3 5 

fall o' dew!*' We could look down without 
anxiety at myriads of pebbles rolling over 
each other and grinding themselves smooth 
in the clear water just below. Enchanted, 
we could listen to the strange singing of these 
pebbles in the ripples, quite unlike the shout- 
ing of rapids or the buzzing noise of the open 
rip, not a loud warning nor a weird water-cry, 
but a thin, insistent chant like the remote 
murmuring of bees. 

Nor were we nervous when The Dingbat 
shot down rapids suddenly, or bumped into 
rocks and big timber hidden just below the 
surface of the stream. The Dingbat proved 
to be well adapted to the kind of work we 
had given her to do, a steady, albeit comical, 
little craft. Where the river was narrow and 
deep and swift she bobbed and glided along 
as prettily as ever. But alas for our unconcern ! 
One day while we were happy watching the 
beautiful curving banks we came suddenly 
upon a deep, narrow place in the river where 
the water gushed through the channel swiftly 
under low, bending willow branches. On top 
of the cupboard at the stern frying pans, 
knives, forks, plates, cups were lying. They 
were all swept away into the swirling flood! 
We could not see them nor reach them with 



36 The Dingbat of Arcady 

sticks. The current was far too swift for 
diving! We could only keep our place near 
the scene of their disappearance by clinging 
to the branches. Our kitchen equipment was 
gone, irrevocably lost! We had only a lard 
pail, two spoons, and a cup left as kitchen 
utensils! Perhaps that is why we learned to 
make lucky stew. 



[Ill] 



[Ill] 

/ WISH Lamb were alive to write about 
lucky stew. He could do it justice. But he 
may have forgotten even roast pig by this 
time. At any rate, since I am no spiritual- 
ist, I cannot expect his assistance. I must 
describe lucky stew myself, beginning with 
the recipe. 

HOW TO MAKE LUCKY STEW 

Put anything you like in a very deep pail 
And pour on anything you please; 

Stir it all up with anything you find 
Under the anywhere trees. 

If anybody comes, asking for dinner. 

Serve it with anything you wish; 
But never, never, never, never, never forget 

To put a four-leaved clover in the dish. 

That is a good recipe of the conventional 
kind, for it leaves out most of the important 
information. Good recipes never tell the 
whole story. If they did, cooking would lack 
romance. As it is, cooking is adventurous 
work. 



40 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

Consider the demand for a four-leaved 
clover! Sometimes no four-leaved clover can 
be found. Jim and I find them only two or 
three times in a season, even when we camp 
all summer, but we have lucky stew nearly 
every night. Therefore I have cleverly learned 
to substitute three white petals from a newly 
opened daisy, or one long, friendly pine- 
needle. These have a magic of their own 
quite as good as the magic of clovers. When 
good recipes call for something which cannot 
be had, the wise cook simply substitutes 
something which can be had. 

Having found the suitable substitute, the 
camper is free to look for "anything you 
please*' and "anything you like." "Anything 
you like" usually means vegetables for us when 
we are traveling in farm country, game or 
fish in the wilds. In Oregon it meant carrots 
most of the time, large, vivid carrots, for they 
were plentiful. In the East it sometimes 
means scraggly rutabagas, bursting cabbages, 
pithy radishes, jaundiced cucumbers, bump- 
tious kohl-rabis, ancient beets — the more the 
kinds the merrier. It may mean sweet corn, 
succulent tomatoes, delicate peas. We take 
chances, always, when we go abroad seek- 
ing adventures. But we try to combine the 



The Dingbat of Arcady 41 

raw materials of lucky stew in ways that 
show imagination, fine sensibility, and deli- 
cate intuition. That is the secret of the 
recipe. 

The vegetables, of course, must be cut into 
pieces that will all be thoroughly cooked at 
the same moment. Hard and antique vege- 
tables must be cut small. Young and tender 
ones should be added after the others have 
cooked awhile. The pail or pot in which they 
are to boil should be filled with water ("any- 
thing you please") to a point just below the 
top of the vegetables, just so that they do not 
float. When they have cooked thoroughly 
a small tin of evaporated milk can be added 
to the liquid in the pail and thickened. Butter 
may be used, or olive oil. Then you have a 
dish for the great of the earth, mingling 
many aromas, rich, warm, filling. 

Lucky stew is best, of course, if a surprise 
can be added to it. A surprise, be it known, is 
something edible found when it is least ex- 
pected. Once in Southern California when I 
was making lucky stew on the beach, I found 
a giant Pismo clam lying calmly near my foot. 
I am sure that it was not the fear of evil which 
gave him over to his fate. Even his big six- 
inch shell was a quite serene denial of error. 



42 The Dingbat of Arcady 

Yet I seized him and added him to my pail 
of onions and potatoes. Perhaps he was con- 
tent to perish in a good cause. 

At other times, and in other places, I have 
put in mussels fresh from the rocks washed 
by surf, delightful surprises. Or, when we 
have been floating down rivers like the Wil- 
lamette, I have taken soft little fish, chubs, 
suckers, and the like, that would be insipid 
eaten alone, and, after parboiling them, skin- 
ning and boning them, added them to my 
stew, thus making a tolerably good chowder. 
One last, lonely frankfurter, one small scrap 
of ham, one lopsided strip of bacon cut into 
bits will give a surprisingly delightful flavor 
to any stew of mixed vegetables. And once, 
in Canada, I made lucky stew out of a porcu- 
pine. He was a bother to skin, but I did not 
do that. His hind legs were the best and 
biggest part of him, and tasted very good, 
like young spring lamb. 

"Anything you wish,'* in the recipe, may 
mean toast in practice, if we have been travel- 
ing regions where bread can be bought. What 
toast can be made over embers of the fire that 
cooked lucky stew! It is crisp and tender and 
has a perfume that suggests the possible 
domesticity of the muses. The color of it is 



The Dingbat of Arcady 43 

a rich, evenly spread, friendly brown, like 
the brown of oak leaves in autumn. Be it 
said that whosoever has eaten lucky stew and 
toast in sufficient quantities has dined well. 
It was in this fashion that Jim and I dined 
when we made our trip in The Dingbat^ and 
because we had only a pail and two spoons, 
we would remove lucky stew from the fire 
and eat it from the pail, competitively, as 
soon as it was cool enough. We bought our 
vegetables from farmers whenever we could; 
a burlap sack full of all kinds cost us about 
twenty-five cents. Sometimes we could buy 
bread from them too, and butter. Often we 
had only triscuit with our stew, or even 
nothing at all. 

Lucky stew is, in its own right, a triumph 
of the imagination. But there is no law against 
dessert. And for dessert in the open wild 
berries are best, small, perfect lyrics made by 
the collaboration of sun and rain and sweet 
earth. No wild strawberries can be better 
than those of Maine and New Brunswick. 
They are borne in abundance on long, fair 
stems glistening with dew, wearing a flame 
color unquenched by it. I have slept where I 
could gather them for my petit dejeuner 
without rising. I remember an upland fallow 



44 The Dingbat of Arcady 

in New Hampshire where the blueberries, 
smoky, mild, uncloying, are cause enough 
for grace after meat. I have torn hands and 
hair without regret in thickets on steep and 
stony hillsides in order to get raspberries, 
red and black. On the banks of the Tobique 
I have picked and eaten the rare, winy, and 
beautiful sand-cherry or beach-plum. It is 
lovely to look at, growing on long, graceful 
sprays that spring out of the sand and lean 
to it again. The flavor is zestful and romantic. 
I have eaten the small wintergreen berry as 
one eats an after-dinner mint. But the hap- 
piest days of adventure have been associated 
with blackberries. When we were floating 
down the Willamette in The Dingbat of 
Arcady they kept us fed for several days, 
once, when we could get no other food. 

We had left the town of Salem behind us 
without' buying much food, for we had found 
out that it was cheaper to make our purchases at 
farms near the river. But for one reason or 
another, after leaving Salem, we found few 
farmers with food to sell. Also we were held 
up by bad weather and forced to travel slowly. 
Therefore, for a stretch of the river before we 
reached Newberg, we lived on strictly limited 



The Dingbat of Arcady 45 

rations. There came a day when we had 
only tea for breakfast with sugar and no milk, 
flanked (if I may use that elaborate expression) 
with one small piece of triscuit each. We 
broke fast thus lightly at dawn, for we were 
eager to be off toward Newberg and good food. 

At about two o'clock that afternoon, after 
fasting all day, we saw a farm near the water's 
edge. I scrambled up the bank, cutting and 
scratching arms and legs on stones and thistles. 
I ran across a small meadow to the house. I 
was met at the door by a hearty old lady who 
seemed to be of Scandinavian origin. I asked 
her if she had any vegetables to sell to two 
hungry campers. 

"I haf a onion,'' she said, '*but I want him 
for my dinner." 

*'Have you any fruit?" 

'1 haf a apple." 

She wanted **him" also for her dinner. She 
explained, as well as she could, that her farm 
was managed for her by her brothers who 
owned a neighboring farm farther inland and 
grew all the fruit and vegetables needed for 
both households, bringing her a supply of 
necessaries whenever they drove over to the 
river. There must have been a hungry glitter 
in my eyes, for she looked at me steadily a 



46 The Dingbat of Arcady 

moment, thinking. Then, with a wrinkly- 
smile, she said, 

"You eat blackberry?'' 

I was almost ready to eat hay, or grass 
like Nebuchadnezzar. I assented eagerly. She 
pointed across the pasture to a patch of heavy 
vines hanging in a great clump in full sunlight, 
twinkling with beady black fruit. 

"Eat all you want and take all you want. 
Too many here," she said. 

I thanked her with an enthusiasm which 
must have puzzled her. Then I ran down the 
bank and hallooed to Jim, bidding him bring 
something up in which to carry berries. In 
a minute he was beside me, and he brought 
a big piece of newspaper in which some of our 
clothing had been wrapped. Together we 
hurried over to the clump of berry vines. We 
set the paper down and began to eat. 

For about fifteen minutes we picked and 
swallowed without conversation. I had never 
liked blackberries much before, but these were 
the best I had ever eaten, in prime condition, 
large, plump with juices from the rains re- 
cently fallen, warm and sugary as a result 
of several days of hot sunshine. They melted 
away in our mouths by tens and dozens. 

When we had eaten very nearly as many 



The Dingbat of Arcady 47 

as was possible, quite as many as was wise, 
we picked a plentiful provision to carry with 
us. We must have put nearly a peck into that 
newspaper. Then, with our treasure, we went 
back to The Dingbat, 

The berries agreed with us well, which was 
fortunate, for we got little else to eat for 
several days. Late that afternoon we did 
come upon a dairy farm, and bought a quart 
of rich cream. But the farmer would sell us 
nothing else. For dinner, therefore, we had 
blackberries swimming in that cream, with 
plenty of sugar. More elaborate meals might 
taste worse. 

While we were eating thus, poetically, on a 
stretch of sand in a wild and wonderful curve 
of the river, with great firs rising on hills 
well away from the shore, it began to rain. 
It was late. We did not want to travel in 
the rain and get wet just at sundown. Nor 
were we sure that we could find a better 
place to camp even if we went on. So we 
pulled The Dingbat up onto the beach and 
tied her. Then, since we had no tent, since 
the friendly firs were far away, we were hard 
put to it for protection. However, we took 
the ever useful strip of canvas which had 
served as a cover for our blankets, strung 



48 The Dingbat of Arcady 

it over a rope tied between two saplings about 
two feet above the earth, and pegged out the 
corners, thereby improvising a small, low 
tent. It was almost satisfactory. I say 
"almost" advisedly. For if our feet were far 
enough under cover to be dry, our faces had 
to be out in the night getting wet. If our 
faces were dry, our feet suffered. This was 
simply the driest of several wet ways of 
spending the night. We took half a dozen 
sticks of dry wood under cover with us, that 
we might be sure of a fire in the morning. 
We took the remainder of our cream under 
cover too, that it might not be diluted and 
spoiled. Then, although sand is a test of the 
camper when used as a bed, we slept reason- 
ably well. 

In the morning we built our fire, made tea, 
and ate the rest of our cream and some more 
berries. At noon we lunched on berries 
again, having found no place where we could 
make purchases. Toward sundown of another 
day, wearily and hungrily, Jim pulled The 
Dingbat into a little cove near a point where 
the river widens and where we could see two 
or three small cottages on the bank. He left 
me in the boat to watch our belongings while 
he went ashore to forage. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 49 

Perhaps the saints are right about the 
value of fasting. Perhaps the ethereal diet 
of the week just past had fed my spirit. I 
do not know. But I know that while I sat in 
The Dingbat and watched the moon rise above 
dark firs on the other side of the river, while 
the sky was still blue with day, a mood of 
wonder and worship came upon me. The 
lapping of water against my boat, a long, 
seductive, fascinating rhythm, lulled to rest 
all bodily longing, all desire for any food but 
beauty. It was one of the fine moments of 
realization that come to all of us, when speech 
is impossible unless it is the speech of poetry 
already made and stored in the mind against 
the time of need. 

It was the fir grove, or the moon, I think, 
that made my mood vocal for me, for I re- 
membered "The Song of Conn the FooF' by 
Fannie Stearns Davis and the words came 
to my lips inevitably. 

"I will go up the mountain after the moon, 
She is caught in a dead fir-tree. 
Like a great pale apple of silver and pearl, 
Like a great pale apple is she." 

While I was murmuring to myself after the 
happy manner of poets and lunatics, I looked 



50 The Dingbat of Arcady 

away from the moon a minute and across 
the glossy top of the river. There, mysterious 
as if guided by an invisible Charon, a huge, 
flat-bottomed rowboat was coming toward 
me, propelled by a pair of oars longer than 
those Jim used in The Dingbat. When it 
drew nearer I saw that the Charon in charge 
was a little girl about ten years old. She was 
attended by several small brothers and sis- 
ters. She pulled alongside and stared at me 
solemnly for a minute or two. I stared sol- 
emnly at her. Then, realizing that her ap- 
pearance had not spoiled my happy mood, 
I resolved to share it with her. I found that 
I could speak to these shy little strangers 
without losing the sense of wonder that had 
been large in my mind when they appeared. 
They had become a part of it. 

I asked them if they liked poetry and they 
admitted that they did, vaguely, perhaps with 
misgivings, but politely nevertheless. The 
idea seemed to be that they were willing to 
like it, though not perfectly sure that they 
had ever heard any. Then, because I was 
afraid that they would not ask me to say any 
poetry for them, I offered to do it. With 
grave courtesy they permitted me to begin. 

I repeated "The Song of Conn the Fool.'' 



The Dingbat of Arcady 5 1 

Not a sound broke the music of the lines 
unless it was the lapping of ripples against 
the boats. Five small faces looked at me in- 
tently, as I pointed to the white moon above 
the fir-trees. When I had finished the little 
girl drew a long breath. Her small brother 
piped, 

"Say another!" 

They had liked it! There was no stopping 
me then. I said "Souls" by Fannie Stearns 
Davis, after explaining carefully that they 
are a part of the mental anatomy usually 
discussed in church and Sunday School, but 
that they have an independent existence 
outside of these excellent institutions. Then 
I repeated "The Cloud" by Sara Teasdale 
and many another lyric. My audience re- 
mained soberly interested, hardly loquacious 
in the intervals between poems. 

Time passed and Jim returned with food 
at last — eggs, bread, butter, vegetables. We 
crossed the river to camp where there were 
no houses, cooked our dinner, ate it, and 
slept deeply. We had promised the children 
to see them in the morning when we went 
back to the httle settlement for more food. 

After breakfast back we went, eager to 
secure supplies to carry with us on our way. 



52 The Dingbat of Arcady 

At the end of the path leading to the cove 
we met the Httle girl who had been in charge 
of the rowboat the night before. She had seen 
us coming. She had picked a pail of logan- 
berries for us. She offered them in appealing 
silence. Then and there I put my hand into 
the pail and drew it out full of the rosy fruit, 
pungent, refreshing and fragrant as only 
loganberries can be. 

Together we went up the path to meet her 
small brothers and sisters, and to greet her 
mother who lived in one of the cottages. It 
was low and weary-looking, that cottage, 
almost ready to bend its vertical lines to- 
gether and slump upon the earth. In the 
door stood the mother of the children who 
had been my audience, a tired, kind-seeming 
woman. She came out to meet us. 

"Are you the lady who recited for the 
children?" 

I admitted that I was and wondered whether 
I was to be scolded. 

"They didn't go to sleep till midnight for 
talking about it," she said. *'I couldn't make 
'em stop." 

*T am afraid you don't like me very much 
if I have kept your children awake," said I, 
apologetically, with vivid memories of my 



The Dingbat of Arcady 53 

own mother's feelings when any of her six 
would not slumber. But this mother re- 
assured me. 

*'Would you say the poetry for me?" she 
asked wistfully. 

What a chance! Of course I w^ould. She 
sat down on the sloping steps of her porch 
and gathered her brood around her. I stood 
in broad sunlight in the path below. My 
hair was done in a tight, ugly knot. My face 
and hands were stained with the juice of 
loganberries. I wore a khaki skirt dingy 
with smoke from many fires and an old shirt 
of my husband's with the collar loose at the 
throat and the sleeves chopped off informally 
at the elbows. A city audience would have 
stopped and looked at me, but would not have 
listened with any degree of respect. My 
audience by the riverside listened with plea- 
sure. And never have I found greater pleasure 
in speaking the lines of a poem. I said every- 
thing that I could remember. 

When my programme came to an end the 
mother went into the house and brought me 
a thank-offering, a dozen cucumbers, a loaf 
of fresh bread, a small pat of butter, carrots 
and lettuce. She would take no money for 
them. So, with peace in our hearts, we thanked 



54 T^he Dingbat of Arcady 

one another for such gifts as we had been able 
to give. Then Jim and I got into The Dingbat 
once more and pushed slowly out into the 
current. Five little figures stood at the top 
of the bank to see us off. We waved to them 
as long as we could. Then the river bent and 
we passed away from them, probably for- 
ever. I have earned my bread, and also my 
loganberries, in many ways; but never have 
they tasted sweeter than then, when I earned 
them by sharing poetry. 

Sometimes when I look back on sane, de- 
lightful meals eaten by the waterways and 
on the open road I am amused by Walter de 
la Mare's little rhyme — 

"It*s a very odd thing— 
As odd as can be — 
That whatever Miss T. eats 
Turns into Miss T." 

That is the strange thing about food, the 
metamorphosis. Shakespeare was made of 
flour and green herbs and the flesh of beasts. 
The greatest living American may be made of 
buckwheat pancakes for all that we know 
to the contrary. Ambrosia eaten by swine 
would become swine. Though we dine on 



The Dingbat of Arcady 55 

roses we are not necessarily sweet. The jack- 
in-the-pulpit for supper would not make 
preachers of us. And yet — 

We are changed by our food. Tiresome, 
conventional kinds of food do not freshen 
us as does the clean, wild, simple food of 
field and forest. Of course, in every com- 
munity nowadays are dietetic dogmatists who 
would eat old automobiles if they suppo^sed 
that the essential calories would be in them 
in soluble form. There are cultists who 
despise food because it is matter. If it were 
not for the stubborn fact of hunger, they 
would not eat. Finally, there are mentally 
dyspeptic individuals who devour Freud with- 
out being able to digest him, when they should 
be eating apples. 

I never have enjoyed camping trips with 
large numbers of people, but when I think 
of all these poor souls I am filled with a 
womanly desire to snatch them up and spirit 
them away into the woods or into farm coun- 
try, on such a trip as Jim and I have taken 
together. I would take them where calories, 
cults, and psychoanalysis are forgotten and 
where every animal and every person, in all 
honesty and dignity, is interested in food. 
After making them all exceedingly hungry. 



56 The Dingbat of Arcady 

after fasting and discipline^ I should like to 
build the world's finest camp fire for them 
and make lucky stew. 

On such fare we have lived, Jim and I, 
when we have left the towns behind us and 
gone out on the roads and rivers adventuring. 
On such food we have thriven. And nothing 
could induce us, I think, to go camping with 
tht-^usual luggage train of tin cans accom- 
panied by many people who think that camp- 
ing means beans. It is not in that way that 
we desire to be fed by the open road. But to 
live clean and hard, to get the sharp savor of 
wild food in sufficient quantities when we can, 
or, where there are homes, to be social and 
neighborly in the breaking of bread, is to 
have food and drink most exquisite and satis- 
fying. By such food we are changed. . . . 

Fed and changed in this manner, we floated 
on down the widening and deepening stream 
until we reached a point just a few miles 
above Oregon City. A great fall spans the 
river at that point and to pass it and go on 
down one must go through the locks. We 
knew this, and when we were near enough 
to reach the dam by eight hours or so of hard 
rowing, we made inquiries and were told that 
if we could get to the locks before five o'clock 



The Dingbat of Arcady 57 

we could go through that day. Jim did his 
best, pulling hard on the oars all that morning 
and afternoon. We did not stop to buy food, 
but ate the last of our bread for luncheon 
and relied on being able to cook some potatoes 
— all we had in our sack — when dinner time 
came. All day we hurried down stream. 

After the long hours in the vivid sun we 
heard the roaring of the falls below us. Riffles 
sing soprano and rapids chant in alto and 
tenor, but great falls boom in basso prof undo. 
The current quickened perceptibly as we 
bore to the left, hugging the shore as we had 
been advised to do. Faster and faster we 
moved. We got into the swift guard-locks 
stream. Jim stopped pulling and perspiring, 
his only care now to keep the boat to the left 
and close to land. Ahead of us we saw the 
gates of the locks. At the right, between the 
dam and the locks, was a paper mill, evidently 
running on a night shift. At the left of the 
locks was a perpendicular bluff about ten 
feet high. We went on and soon brought up 
hard against the gates of the locks. They 
were closed. What to do next we did not 
know. We hallooed. 

At first nothing happened. Then a man, 
coming out of the mill at the right, saw us. 



58 The Dingbat of Arcady 

He said that the gates would not be opened 
until eight o*clock next morning when a large 
boat would go through. We could not pass 
until then. At once we realized our plight. 
BlufF to the left of us, gates in front of us, 
falls to the right of us volleying and thunder- 
ing! Behind us was a current up which only 
motor power could have pulled The 'Dingbat, 
We could sleep in her, perhaps, in the shadow 
of the mill, but that would mean going with- 
out dinner for our potatoes were still as raw 
as when they were dug. The thought was 
disconcerting. The kind man who had dis- 
covered us realized our distress. 

"You'll have to spend the night here if you 
want to stay by your boat and your goods,'' 
he said. *'But wait a minute. Til speak to 
the boss." 

The boss came out and looked us over. 

**You have your wife along," he said to 
Jim, meditatively. 

Jim admitted what was obvious. 

"Well," said the boss, with a hospitable 
wave of the hand, as if he were welcoming 
us to the dear old Waldorf-Astoria, "well, 
if you can get up to it, you can spend the night 
in my pile of junk!" 

We followed the gesture with our eyes and 



The Dingbat of Arcady 59 

noticed what we had not seen before, several 
heaps of shavings on top of the bluff at the 
left and three sections of huge iron pipe. Each 
section must have been about seven feet 
long and six feet in diameter. They might 
have been sewer pipes for a large city. Jim 
looked at me with a gleam of intelligence in 
his eyes and I answered with an understand 
ing gleam. It could be done. 

*'We'll have pipe dreams to-night,'* said Jim. 

Thereupon we thanked the boss and ac- 
cepted his offer. He grinned and told the 
kind man who had discovered us to help us 
up the bluff. This friendly soul turned Jut 
to be the night watchman for the mill, just 
come on duty. He crossed a high bridge from 
the mill to the bluff and told us to pull over 
to the left. This we did and Jim threw our 
long rope to him. He pulled us up stream 
a little way and into a niche where the current 
was not felt. Then he tied the rope to a tree 
on the bank above us. Jim managed to get 
our blankets and other necessaries hoisted 
up to him by the use of oars and another 
rope. Then, with some assistance, he scram- 
bled up himself. Finally, the two men to- 
gether hauled me up, bumping and scraping 
like a clumsy bundle. We were landed. 



6o The Dingbat of Arcady 

After that all went well. We took armfuls 
of shavings from the heaps near at hand — 
refuse from the pulp mill — and we spread 
them thickly on the bottom of the interior 
of one of the sections of pipe. On the shavings 
we spread our blankets, all but one which hung 
over the back of our strange house. The 
canvas covered the front opening in a similar 
fashion. Our shelter was ready for us. 

In front of the front door we sat down and 
built a fine little fire of shavings and small 
blocks of wood. We cooked our raw potatoes, 
a plentiful if somewhat plain dinner. W^hile 
we were eating the night watchman came 
over to smoke a social pipe and chat with 
Jim. He told us, as men often do in the 
open w^orld, the story of his adventures. 
They made ours seem rather tame. Once he 
had rolled down a mountain-side on the back 
of his horse, breaking so many bones that he 
could not count them all. He had been unable 
to work for a year after that. But now he was 
fairly well mended and glad to have his quiet 
job. He was a zestful man, quick to get the 
sweet of life, and therefore good company. 
He told us that we would be perfectly safe in 
our queer house, that the men who worked in 
the mill were a decent lot and would not 



The Dingbat of Arcady 6 1 

bother us. He bade us call him, however, if 
we were in need of any kind of assistance. 
The shift of workers would change once in 
the night, he said, and we would hear men 
coming and going, but all would be well. 
He shook the dead ashes from his pipe and 
left us. 

Then we crept into one of the strangest 
shelters ever inhabited by a teacher and a 
poet. We rested well. If you should ever be 
troubled with insomnia, I suggest that you 
find a large, clean, iron pipe on a bank above 
a river, put shavings in it, spread your blan- 
kets out thereon, eat a dinner of plain boiled 
potatoes, turn in early, and find your cure! 

Early the next morning The Dingbat fol- 
lowed the large boat through the locks and 
was left below the dam, floating securely on 
that portion of the Willamette River which 
is said to be "bottomless." Every lake and 
stream we know has an alleged '^bottomless" 
place. At some spot known to small boys 
and ancient romancers every pond and river 
pours its floods through the earth to the Anti- 
podes or draws them thence! Having lis- 
tened to such tales alongshore, I used to 
tremble when we went gliding over these dark 
abysses. I did not care to sink through this 



62 The Dingbat of Arcady 

perforated sphere, only to emerge damp and 
bedraggled in some foreign land where I 
should be unable to speak the language! 
Now I have learned to float upon such fabled 
deeps without a tremor. There must be fairy 
tales! 

We crossed the "bottomless" part of our 
stream and made for the mouth of the little 
Clackamas River which pours into the Wil- 
lamette at a sharp angle to it just below the 
dam. We had planned to go up the Clackamas 
in search of fish. 

The stream was brisk and beautiful though 
not very deep at the mouth. We got out of 
The Dingbat and walked, pushing and pulling 
her up to the first sharp bend. On the inside 
of that bend was a grove and on the outside, 
on which side we stayed, was a bit of flat 
country with a few scrubby trees and bushes 
in which to hide our camp. We spent several 
days there, resting, writing, and reading, but 
we found no fish, — none except the poor, 
dead eels that floated about in places where 
the current was not swift and near the edges 
of it. Why there should have been so many 
dead eels I do not know, unless it is that 
they die a natural death in the summer 
season. Within walking distance were several 



The Dingbat of Arcady 63 

farms and Jim made a daily trip to one or 
another of them to get fresh drinking water 
and provisions. 

One day after he had gone on this errand, 
I rambled aimlessly away from our camp and 
down the bank of the stream. Perhaps I was 
meditating a poem. Perhaps I was merely 
rapt in the delight of being fallow-minded 
for a while. At any rate, I totally forgot 
that it was my duty to remain on guard over 
our belongings. When I came to myself, like 
the Prodigal Son, I turned back toward camp 
and saw a sight that filled me with terror. 
Between me and the clump of bushes where 
our food and clothing were spread on the 
ground were five or six large cows. 

In spite of all that I had lived through 
recently I was a city woman again, through 
and through. Everything in me cried out 
suddenly for asphalt and policemen. Here 
was a primitive mystery. Bovine psychology 
was something that I did not understand in 
the least. Cows had no business in the woods 
anyway. 

I walked toward them anxiously, cautiously. 
They lowered their horny heads and mooed. 
Then they paused and gazed at me with a 
vulgar curiosity all their own. One came 



64 The Dingbat of Arcady 

toward me at a slow trot. It was enough. 
I had a Smith and Wesson at my belt, but 
I am an incorrigible pacifist. I fled. I forgot 
that it was my bounden duty as a good sport 
to protect the Lares and Penates of our 
sylvan household. I climbed into the tallest 
of the low willows on the bank. I remembered 
with pride that I had never been afraid of 
mice, but I realized with shame that I was 
afraid of cows. It was another proof that it 
is the unknown which terrifies. Mice I knew. 
Even if a mouse ran across my foot I should 
not be afraid. But if a cow — cows were 
strangers. I climbed ignominiously. 

For some time I sat on my perch and 
trembled and caught my breath, not because 
I continued to be afraid, but because I was 
heavy and the branch slender. If I shifted 
my weight even for a moment, I was obliged 
to clutch the trunk of the tree firmly, for I 
did not care to precipitate myself abruptly 
into the ranks of the enemy. I disturbed the 
gods with heathen petitions that the branch 
would remain attached to the trunk until my 
husband returned to rescue me. How ad- 
mirable are husbands, I thought! What large, 
strong, valiant, noble creatures! How I wished 
that mine would return to me! 



The Dingbat of Arcady 65 

The time for his return came, but he did 
not come promptly. Never before had he 
remained away so long. The cows were walk- 
ing placidly across our neatly folded blankets 
and snuffing at our piled-up clothing. I 
roared at them. In vain. They knew me for 
the coward that I was. It would be stretching 
a point to say that they grinned, but I sus- 
pected them of humor. I broke a branch 
from my willow tree and threw it at them, 
doing my worst in the way of a roar at the 
same moment. One cow looked up at me 
imperturbably and set her right forefoot 
down in a package of shredded wheat biscuit. 
Another set her left hind foot down with a 
crash upon our one small mirror. 

A woman's faith in man, or in any man, is 
tested by the nature of her outcry in time of 
trouble. I began to houhoo and halloo em- 
phatically in the hope that my own Achilles, 
my own Arthur, my own Jim of the strong 
arm and ready wit would be on his homeward 
way and hear. He was returning and he did 
come to the rescue. He strode rapidly into 
camp, carrying a great water jug in one hand 
and bearing two large, well filled burlap sacks 
on his shoulder. The cows gave one look at 
his red, perspiring, but determined counte- 



66 The Dingbat of Arcady 

nance and moved off with deliberate haste. 
Jim set down the sacks, picked up a stick, 
chased the cows into the open pasture whence 
they had come, helped his silly lady down 
out of the tremulous willow tree, scolded her 
roundly for the havoc wrought, and then sat 
down to rest. 

When I had done what I could, in a truly 
penitential state of mind, to set our dis- 
ordered camp to rights, Jim remembered his 
burlap sacks and he opened them with pride 
and pleasure. One was filled with excellent 
vegetables for lucky stew. The other jingled 
and rattled. Out of it Jim took an egg-beater, 
a large carving knife, a big iron frying-pan, 
a measuring cup, and other long-needed cook- 
ing utensils, all pretty well worn, but still in 
usable condition. They had been given him 
by the wife of the farmer of whom he bought 
the vegetables. She had just bought a new 
set. We had not bought any new things to 
take the place of those brushed off the rear 
pantry cupboard soon after our trip began. 
What fun it would be to have these con- 
venient trifles ! An iron frying-pan ! Now once 
more, we could have fried eggs for breakfast. 
As Friday said to Robinson Crusoe, "Oh, 
happy, oh, glad!" 



The Dingbat of Arcady 67 

It was onl)^ the next day that another 
farmer gave Jim as many red plums as he 
would pick from a heavily laden tree and 
Jim brought them home to me in a burlap 
sack. Not a cent would that farmer take 
for them. Life had given him more than he 
could use or sell. He would share with the 
poor. 

The sense of Hfe*s fruitfulness is one of 
the joys of sojourning among farmers. It 
makes receiving seem as blessed as giving, 
or rather it transmutes both giving and re- 
ceiving into one thing — sharing. A good 
farmer can give away a dozen cucumbers with 
a shy off-handedness that minimizes the im- 
portance of the gift and yet does not minimize 
the pleasure of it. He does not expect that 
the bread which he scatters upon the waters 
will return to him carefully spread with the 
exquisite jam of worldly favors. He does not 
tell us that he hopes his gift will improve 
us. He gives no advice with it. He gives 
simply, as nature gives, as the best poets 
give, or he does not give at all. 

After we left the Clackamas we received 
no more gifts and had no more quaint expe- 
riences for a number of days. We had come 
to the most difficult and least agreeable part 



68 The Dingbat of Arcady 

of our trip. We had to pass Portland and her 
suburbs before we could go on into the 
Columbia and find wild country again. The 
river was busy and industrial. Large boats 
cut through the waters leaving big waves in 
their wake. No good camper is happy under 
such conditions. We made all the speed we 
could to get past. 

We arrived at St. Johns one evening after 
dark, very weary. We found a long beach, 
none too clean, near a pier at which a Standard 
Oil steamer was docked. In the darkness we 
stopped, went ashore, made a small fire out 
of rubbish and bits of broken boxes in a 
place as secluded as possible, and cooked and 
ate a light supper. Then the question before 
us was where to sleep. We asked ourselves 
whether we had better go on down stream 
that night or wait until daybreak. If we had 
not been tired we should have preferred to 
go on. But we had been traveling since early 
morning and needed rest. 

Slowly and with great skill Jim worked 
The 'Dingbat in among the big piles that sup- 
ported the pier. We got well under it. Then 
we moved out on the port side of the big 
steamer so that she stood between us and any 
waves that might roll in from the wake of 



The Dingbat of Arcady 69 

passing boats. It was not pleasant to be 
awakened in the night with The Dingbat 
rocking madly under us and spray flying over 
her sides. When we were safely hidden under 
the pier, but near the steamer, we lay down 
on the floor of The Dingbat^ pulled our canvas 
over us, and slept. 

So eager were we to be off and find green 
country again that we awoke very early next 
morning before the stars had left the sky. 
As stealthily as if we were criminals trying 
to escape a dire fate, Jim worked The Dingbat 
out between the piles again and into the open 
stream. At dawn we found a place where we 
could cook breakfast and after that we went 
on much refreshed. Since that night I have 
had a new feeling of friendliness for big, ugly, 
hard-working boats. I had traveled in them 
before. But intimacy was reserved for the 
night when I rested in the protection of a 
big, strong, dark hulk. 



[IV] 



[IV] 

It was not long after that that we turned 
into the Willamette Slough, a poor relation 
of the Willamette River, a sluggish and dirty 
stream that crawls by inches into the superb 
Columbia. The soul of the river was the soul 
of a strong man, free and able to do brave 
work in the world. The soul of the slough 
was a spirit in prison. It was burdened with 
all that the river cast into it and held back 
by the power of the Columbia below it and 
by the very slight bending of the ground under 
it. Here was no laughter, no triumphing. 
The surface was dull and under it was mud. 
The people who lived on the banks differed 
in sad and subtle ways from the people who 
lived on the shores of the river above. But 
I must not forget that it was here that we met 
a man who helped us to believe in something 
that we call ''salvation by mirth." 

When I speak of ''salvation by mirth*' I 
do not mean the solemnly persistent cheer- 
fulness of Polyanna. I mean the clean, deep, 
social happiness that begins out of doors, of 
which John Masefield says, 

"The days that make us happy make us wise." 



74 The Dingbat of Arcady 

Salvation by faith and salvation by deeds 
are as old as the Bhagavad-Gita, but salva- 
tion by mirth, which has been needed as 
long, may be new to owlish philosophers. 
Perhaps only poets understand it. Jim and I 
have met a few people on our wanderings 
who seemed to be untouched by salvation by 
faith and deeds, who might have accepted 
salvation by mirth. One of them was the 
fisherman we met on the bank of the slough. 

At five o'clock in the afternoon, or there- 
abouts, while we were looking for a place to 
camp, we saw a small, dilapidated house-boat 
moored beside a stretch of level land on which 
were trees. At first we did not see the owner, 
but, when we landed, we found him behind 
his abode. 

Like a wizard of old he stood near a wide, 
high fire, a weird black figure seen through 
the crimson of the climbing flames. Two big 
tins (like Standard Oil tins) stood beside the 
fire. From a third, in the middle of it, steam 
came as from the caldron of a Merlin. The 
wizard was a bearded man of middle age 
and somewhat the worse for wear. He lacked 
the sinister impressiveness usually attributed 
to wizards by those who know them best. As 
we drew nearer we saw that he was cutting 



The Dingbat of Arcady 75 

up bits of orange-peel and tossing them into 
his caldron. He threw in, also, a handful of 
what looked like pickling spice — and was. 

"May we camp here near your place over- 
night?" asked Jim. 

*'Sure/' he said, ^'anything you like." 

We stood watching his alchemy. Curiosity 
overcame me. 

"What is it in the tin?" 

"Water boilin' fer crayfish. Fm a cray- 
fisherman." 

He lifted the cover from one of the tins 
at his side and showed us hundreds of "craw- 
dads" creeping about in it. 

"To-day's catch," he said, "First you catch 
'em. Then you clean 'em. Then you boil 
'em in salted water with peel and spices. 
Then you cool 'em. Then sell 'em to restau- 
rants in Portland. Fifty cents a half dozen. 
Swells eat 'em. Ever try 'em?" 

We admitted that we had not had that 
pleasure. Then he sat down on an old stool, 
picked a crayfish out of the tin full of them, 
found the right flipper in its tail, gave it a 
twist and a jerk, and dropped the little beast 
Hmp and wilted into the steaming tin where 
it reddened just as lobsters do. He worked 
as fast as a woman hulling berries. 



76 The Dingbat of Arcady 

'*Clean 'em and kill 'em same time," he 
explained. 

We retired as gracefully as possible from 
the neighborhood of his fire and built one of 
our own within sight and earshot. I put on 
a pail of water to boil for we were to dine on 
a dozen ears of green corn. While they cooked 
Jim did the work of camp-making. Once 
he called out to the crayfisherman. They 
exchanged mild pleasantries. I began to 
realize that the wizard had an unsatisfied 
social streak in him. After watching us for a 
while he picked out a dozen good crayfish 
from his tin full of boiling ones and brought 
them over to us. 

"For your dinner/' he said. "Let 'em cool 
first." 

Then, for fear of being intrusive, perhaps, 
he withdrew rapidly. 

When our corn was cooked Jim took four 
big, golden ears of it over to him with our 
compliments and a bit of butter. He accepted 
them all with an awkward pleasure that made 
us feel sure that he was unaccustomed to 
receiving gifts. He sat down beside his fire 
to eat corn and crayfish. We sat down be- 
side ours to eat crayfish and corn. And while 
we were still eating the dusk deepened and 



The Dingbat of Arcady 77 

we gradually lost sight of the wizard in a 
light river mist. It was as if he had taken 
the smoke of his fire and the steam from his 
caldron and woven a gray, magic wall of them 
around our camp in the trees. 

We were up early the next morning and 
the crayfisherman was up early too. He was 
puttering around in a shabby old rowboat, 
when Jim built our fire for breakfast. While 
I was cooking he joined Jim and took him 
over to show him the house-boat. Later I 
learned how the conversation ran. Jerking 
his thumb over his shoulder in my direction, 
the crayfisherman said: 

"I had a piece of calico myself once." 

''What happened to her?*' asked Jim. 

With more than a touch of melodrama in 
his manner the crayfisherman threw open the 
door of his floating palace and pointed to 
an old jacket, evidently a woman's, hanging 
on the back of it. 

*'Hern," he said. "She run away with 
another man." 

In the clear, hard light of the morning 
our wizard was only a lonely man! We felt 
vaguely sorry for him when we climbed into 
The Dingbat and pulled slowly away from the 
dilapidated house-boat across the murky ooze 



78 The Dingbat of Arcady 

of the slough. Were we destined to hear more 
of him later on ? 

Steadily we rowed down the slough toward 
St. Helens where it empties into the Co- 
lumbia. Saturday came and we were eager 
to get to the post office before it closed for 
the week-end. We expected important mail. 
So we struggled with an indifferent current 
until about four o'clock in the afternoon. 
Then we stopped and made inquiries. We 
learned that St. Helens was not far from that 
point as a cross-country walk, a matter of 
only two or three miles, but that it was much 
farther by boat because it was necessary to 
go around a point of land jutting out into the 
river. Also, walking was quicker than pulling 
The Dingbat over the dead waters of the 
slough. Therefore we took counsel together 
and decided that I had better walk to St. 
Helens for the mail. We could meet at the 
town dock whither I could go after purchasing 
food for supper. 

I put on my slouch hat, my high, square- 
toed boots, my belt and the holster that held 
my Smith and Wesson. I set off at a good 
pace through wooded country, seeking St. 
Helens. The earth was springy under the 
trees and grateful to the feet. I had been 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 79 

sitting still so many hours in The Dingbat 
that just to be moving was a delight. I strode 
along rapidly, walking as you can walk only 
when you have been living in the open for 
some time with clear skies over the top of 
your mind. Presently I entered St. Helens 
from the rear and saw the quaint little town 
sloping down hill toward the river. I was ruddy 
with health, exercise, pleasure, and sunburn. 
I did not stop to consider how I looked. Nor 
did I change my stride. I hurried on to what 
seemed to be an important street of the town. 

The first person I saw was a nice-looking 
woman in an afternoon frock, white and speck- 
less. She was carrying a letter as if she in- 
tended to mail it. I caught up with her. 

'Tardon me, madam, but where is the post 
office?" 

She was about to answer pleasantly, I 
think, but before she could frame the words 
she took one look at me. The smile stiffened 
on her face. 

"That way," she gasped, and ran in the 
opposite direction as if for her life. No doubt, 
after looking at my Smith and Wesson, she 
wondered who this strange Boadicea could 
be. I stood still long enough to blush for my 
appearance and behavior. But it was thrilling 



8o The Dingbat of Arcady 

too. I, who had been born and bred to the 
dullness of bridge whist and the mild delights 
of pink teas, was taking a Western village 
by storm and putting the feminine population 
to flight with one glance of my fiery eyes! 
I knew the exultation of conquest and, for the 
first time in my life, sympathized with Alex- 
ander and Caesar. But I straightened my 
hat, moderated my stride, subdued my ex- 
pression into something more nearly approach- 
ing the lady-like, and went to the post office 
for my letters. My adventures were over for 
that day. In due season I met Jim at the 
town dock, we wandered oflF and found a 
camping site, making plans together to cross 
the Columbia and pull into the little Lewis 
River next morning. We had been told that 
we might find salmon-trout in it. But, as it 
happened, we went back and forth across 
the Columbia several times before we finally 
settled in a camp on the Lewis. And one of 
our crossings nearly made an end of the cruise 
of The Dingbat sooner than we anticipated. 

The Columbia is broad and deep near St. 
Helens, a marvelous and mighty river. Over 
it the winds blow from the ocean and the waves 
on it arc hke the waves on the Great Lakes. 
Sometimes waves and current together make 



The Dingbat of Arcady 8 1 

the crossing difficult for little boats like ours. 
But The Dingbat had behaved so well hitherto 
that we did not realize the difficulties of 
passing those ridges and hollows of heavy 
water. We set out confidently enough. 

We found that it was very slow going. The 
oars moved clumsily in the wooden oarlocks 
and w^e learned, almost at once, that The 
Dingbat^ with no curved line in her anatomy, 
was not suited to this new environment. Jim 
got her into the middle of the stream and then 
discovered that he was getting tired and 
making poor progress. Just at that moment 
a boat under motor power came up with us 
and, seeing that we were having a hard pull, 
offered us a tow. Gratefully we flung our 
rope. We thought we had solved the problem 
of getting across. Their engine started and 
we felt ourselves moving swiftly after them 
over the rough river. 

For a few minutes all went well and then, 
owing to some slight change of direction, the 
larger boat pulled the bow of The Dingbat 
straight through a wave. It covered our floor 
with water and put us in great danger of 
overturning at any moment. I screamed, 
which was fortunate, for the man holding 
our rope looked, saw what had happened 



82 The Dingbat of Arcady 

dropped our rope at once, and had the engine 
stopped that they might stand by and see 
us through. Jim never lost his head for a 
moment, but scrambled to the oars and pulled 
The 'Dingbat about until she was head on 
with the waves. He yelled to me to bail like 
mad, but I did not need to be told. As the 
water sloshed about from side to side, one 
edge or the other would tip. Balancing 
against the water with the weight of my body 
as well as I could, I dipped out the water 
as fast as possible with a pan fortunately 
found on the floor. Every panful out made 
us that much safer, but we were deep in the 
water and any unusually heavy wave might 
have overturned us. Slowly and steadily, 
however, we pulled through the worst of the 
waves and finally, dripping with the perspira- 
tion of nervous excitement and with the water 
that had nearly swallowed us, we reached 
the shallows near the mouth of the Lewis 
and stepped out, exhausted, on the shore. 
The men in the motor boat who had tried to 
help us and who had remained to see that 
we were safe cheered for us and waved their 
hats before they started their engine and went 
on up the stream. 

It may have been the next day, or the next. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 83 

that we left St. Helens and went up the Co- 
lumbia with some salmon fishermen to a gravel 
bank where Indians used to fight long ago, 
and where arrow-heads are still to be found. 
We had luncheon together and then we all 
hunted for arrow-heads. The fishermen would 
not keep the ones they found, for they said 
that they lived near enough to find others 
at any time. They gave all they could find 
to us, even though they believed that the 
bits of shaped flint were worth good money. 
While we were looking for arrow-heads they 
told us a tale of a crayfisherman and his bride. 
We wondered if it could possibly be the friendly 
crayfisherman who had been kind to us. But we 
could not tell for we had never known his name. 

They told us that he had been married, 
this crayfisherman, to a sweet young girl 
from up the river, and that he had always 
treated her well when he was sober. He would 
drink with other men for the sociability of 
the thing, however, and then go home roaring 
and beat his little wife until she was in terror 
of her life. Finally she fled to an old friend 
of her father, who took her up the river to 
her mother in his boat. Poor child, she did 
not want another man. 

Was this our crayfisherman, who might 



84 The Dingbat of Arcady 

have accepted salvation by mirth if Fate had 
offered it, who was doomed to a lonely life 
in an old house-boat with crayfish for com- 
rades and a woman*s jacket hanging on the 
door? Had he talked with us freely because 
the need of his soul was for speech, covering 
the real reason for his loneliness because he 
was sober at the time and could not bear to 
look it in the face? Did he hold to his own 
version of the story because it supported his 
pride? Did he let the old jacket satisfy his 
need of sentiment because he must have that 
much tenderness in his life? We had no way 
of knowing. There were many crayfishermen. 
They talked as they felt. 

It was not strange that he talked with us 
freely. The hunger of the spirit for sympathy, 
we have learned, is as common and as con- 
stant as the hunger of the body for food. 
But whereas people will seek the body*s food 
in their own home gardens, many of them 
have given up hope of finding the spirit's 
food in their own home towns. Lacking an 
efficient and sustaining religion, the neediest 
are to be found on any wayside. They are 
wistful mendicants. Although they carry no 
begging bowls, you will not need to be told 
who they are if you wish to give an alms for 



The Dingbat of Arcady 85 

your souFs sake. And a Croesus of spiritual 
riches, I believe, could travel the wide world 
over and be received in palace and hovel 
alike without money or price for the giving 
of this one good gift of sympathy. It would 
have to be real sympathy, however, austere 
and strong and full of faith. It could not be 
a mawkish sentimentality. It could not be 
a mask worn for a purpose. It would have 
to be akin to the sympathy of Christ who first 
told this need of our kind and taught this 
way of giving. 

People sometimes talk more freely with 
strangers than with their neighbors. The 
cherished confession is for those who will carry 
it far away. Our crayfisherman was excep- 
tional only in that, being a man, his confession 
was tragic. Men usually regale us with tales 
of fights, floods, fires, and other adventures. 
Women tell us of their sorrows — why the wee 
baby died of the croup and how it feels to 
have your man out of a job. Children tell 
everything. And we who listen find our own 
hearts quickened, our own lives deepened and 
strengthened by the sharing of simple, uni- 
versally known experiences. 

We are changed by beauty, too. Never did 



8 6 The Dingbat of Arcady 

I know what beauty could mean to me until 
I stood one day in a field of blowing thistle- 
down. I had been beating about in the brush 
by the riverside, looking for berries, when I 
came upon a clearing, a circular patch like 
a fairy's ring. Upon the earth stood many 
thistle plants, thorny Puritans, stiff in prickly 
rectitude. Above them in a mild sky floated 
millions of the lovely souls of them, light and 
exquisitely white where purple blooms had 
died, millions of Ariels climbing up shafts of 
sunlight into Heaven, and then gently sliding 
down again. They rested on my eyelids, they 
caught in my hair, they glistened silverly 
on the gray wool of my sweater. I did not 
touch one of them myself, and yet I have kept 
them all. If I could have prayed then, I 
should have besought Apollo to make me like 
the seed of the thistle. For, although I had 
known them all my life, it was as if I had 
never seen thistles before. 

The reason for this new joy in old beauty 
was not far to seek. We had acquired some 
small measure of that hardness of body and 
clarity of mind that belong to the life we were 
living. We had cut ourselves loose from the 
multifarious cares of our ordinary lives and 
had given ourselves up to learning the ways 



The Dingbat of Arcady 87 

of sun and wind and rain. Our senses had 
been quickened and made keen. Only a few 
things seemed important — food, rest, beauty, 
and worship. For the first time in my Hfe 
since my childhood, I was able to receive 
the gift of the world's loveliness in the spirit 
in which it is given, to let beauty be a growth 
and a discipline. 

It is something merely to perceive beauty. 
It is enough to balk vulgar irrelevance. Once 
upon a time I went for a drive with a woman 
who could not see it as it actually existed 
before her eyes because her mind was full of 
stereotyped images of it as she had read of it 
in books. We were driving around the top 
of a high hill, looking across a valley to moun- 
tains that were a perfectly honest rosy pink 
in the distance. 

"Pink mountains!** I exclaimed. 

"Mountains are purple and hills are blue,*' 
she said solemnly, as if she were rebuking 
me for a minor lapse in morals, "and who 
ever heard of pink mountains, you funnv 
woman?** 

For her the lights and shadows had fallen 
in vain. The sunset had wasted time in being 
original. It might as well have copied yes- 
terday's. Looking up at the aurora borealis 



8 8 The Dingbat of Arcady 

from a chilly New England valley, looking 
down on the apocalypse of the Grand Canyon, 
she would have thought only the conventional 
thing, and she would have said it. True lovers 
keep silence. For devout worship she would 
have substituted a counterfeit politeness, the 
cant, the affectation, the lush nonsense that 
men all too often bring to the discussion of 
sacred things. 

Yet it might have been otherwise if she 
could have lived out of doors for a month or 
two, sharing William Watson's "overflowing 
sun." She might have learned to pray for a 
soul as beautiful as a far hill under rosy light. 
For the love of beauty, normally, begins out 
of doors. The race has been born into that 
growing and blowing beauty, and out of it; 
whereas the beauty of cities, of man's intellect, 
of spiritual prowess, changes from generation 
to generation. These are still new things in 
our ancient world. 

Living in the open, moreover, makes us 
gloriously jealous, after a while, of the lovely 
individualities of all things, makes us eager 
for communion with them, makes us long 
to wear upon our souls the images of such 
things as we have loved. To the people of 
the town all rivers are alike. The camper 



The Dingbat of Arcady 89 

knows that no two rivers are alike. I have 
seen the utter blueness of the St. Lawrence 
under a sunny sky. I have seen the Brule 
rushing headlong through Wisconsin, yellow- 
brown in the spring. I have seen the placid 
"Isis" near "Folly Bridge" in Oxford, and 
the dark, menacing grandeur of the Columbia. 
But the little Lewis River which we entered 
when we had crossed the Columbia, has as 
much character of its own as any greater 
stream that I know. The cloudy sage-green 
of its waters I have seen nowhere else. 



[V] 



[V] 

tv'E. FISHED all day without any luck when 
we first entered the Lewis. We pulled up 
stream as far as the fork where the salmon- 
trout were said to be. But we caught none. 
At sundown we dropped down to the mouth 
again, rather disgruntled. We saw a house- 
boat of the scow type securely chained to 
piles in the bank and asked the fisherman 
who lived in it for permission to camp on 
shore, but near his residence, for the night. 
He seemed surprised by the request for he 
did not own the land, but he said that it 
would probably be all right. He was glad 
to have neighbors. He and his wife and 
partner, he said, would be at hand if we should 
need anything. 

In a grove at a short distance we built 
our fire and made lucky stew with plain 
potatoes. In about half an hour they were 
ready and we began to eat. Then we saw our 
fisherman friend coming toward us, balancing 
something in each uplifted hand, like a waiter 
in a cheap restaurant. When he arrived it 
was evident that he held a pan of hot bis- 



94 T^he 'Dingbat of Arcady 

cuits in one hand and a hot apple pie in the 
other. 

"The wife thought you'd Hke 'em for sup- 
per," he said. 

Did we hke them? For weeks we had Hved 
chiefly on lucky stew and triscuit. Those 
biscuits and that pie vanished quickly. After 
eating them we went over to the house-boat 
to thank Mrs. Fisherman. She and her 
husband and his fishing partner all welcomed 
us cordially and bade us sit down on their 
pier and talk a bit. We did. 

The two men owned and operated a motor 
fishing-boat on the Columbia, where they 
caught the big salmon for the market. They 
asked what luck we had had with salmon- 
trout up the Lewis. We admitted that we 
had had no luck at all. 

**What bait did you use?" they asked. 

''Worms," we replied innocently. 

They laughed heartily. 

"You won't get 'em that way. Gotta use 
salmon eggs." 

Then we learned the complexities of fish- 
ing for salmon-trout. They feed on the eggs 
of the big salmon. First the fisherman takes 
a mass of these eggs and pickles them in 
granulated sugar. When they have stood in 



The Dingbat of Arcady 95 

sugar until they are firm and will not spoil 
easily he puts a mass of them in a small sack 
with some stones. He throws this sack over- 
board into the middle of the river just above 
the place where he expects to fish. Then he 
baits a long line with two or three salmon 
eggs, puts on a heavy sinker, throws it in on 
the down-stream side of the sack, rows back 
to shore with his reel, and waits. 

That is what we did and it was not long 
before we were rewarded for our pains. We 
pulled in a lovely, leaping, silver fish that 
flashed in and out of the water as we reeled, 
flickering like money in the sun. He was 
clear pink, like salmon, under his silver sur- 
face, and sweeter than any other trout I ever 
ate. After that the day that brought us one 
or two — a good meal — was a red-letter day 
for us. 

Mr. Fisherman and his wife and partner 
proved to be friendly, enjoyable human 
beings and got up a jolly fishing party for us. 
They came to breakfast with us first, under 
our tree, where we made pancakes for them 
and camp coffee. It was a feast. Then we 
all piled into their fishing-boat and in it 
crossed the Columbia and went back again 
into the Willamette Slough. Our friends took 



96 The Dingbat of Arcady 

us to a muddy backwater where catfish were 
plentiful, the kind called bullheads in the 
East. In about an hour the five of us had 
caught sixty-five good fish and we thought 
that would be enough for one day. We ate 
the luncheon we had carried with us, rested 
and talked religion while the men smoked 
pipes, and, in the afternoon, went home in 
triumph with our catch. Twenty-eight fish 
were given us as our share and our friends 
taught Jim how to skin them. The bullhead, 
to be good, must be skinned. 

We pulled The Dingbat up the stream to 
a camping place near a farm where we hoped 
to get milk, water, and vegetables to eat with 
our fish. I went up to the house and secured 
these necessaries from the young farmer's 
wife. When I returned with my purchases 
the young man who owned the farm was stand- 
ing on the bank above Jim, looking down at 
our catch hungrily. 

"Do you hke bullheads?" I asked. 

"You bet!" 

"Have some for your dinner," said Jim, 
quickly. 

The young farmer demurred politely. He 
hadn't meant anything like that, he said. 
But we urged him to take some fish, for so 



The Dingbat of Arcady 97 

many people had given us food that we were 
eager to do a little giving ourselves. Finally 
he agreed to take a few bullheads up to the 
house for his wife. A little later she appeared 
on the bank, bringing us a few ears of green 
corn, a handful of tender cucumbers, lettuce 
and vinegar to go with it, and a small pitcher 
of sweet cream. She suggested, also, that I go 
with her to the berry patch in the pasture 
and get fruit for dessert. I did, and we had 
the first real two-course dinner of our trip. 
After dinner we went up to their cottage 
and spent the evening in their tiny living- 
room, admiring a fine Oregon baby and talk- 
ing of nothing in particular, which is one of 
the best things to talk about when one's 
feelings are social. 

Making friends with a small family — 
father, mother, and baby, is a simple matter. 
Making friends with a- large family and the 
pets of a large family is a more ambitious 
undertaking. We discovered that a few days 
later when we went up the Lewis to the fork 
again for salmon-trout. We spent the day 
fishing and swimming and then, when we 
were floating down again to our camping 
place, we came suddenly upon ten children. 



98 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

three dogs, two cows, and several pigs all in 
the water together near the shallow edge of 
the stream. (Just below that point people 
drank the river water and thought it was 
quite pure!) The boys were wearing old over- 
alls cut to knee length and loose, but hitched 
to them with most discreet *'gallusses/' The 
girls had on old dresses. The youngest chil- 
dren wore shreds of underwear. It was 
sweltering hot and they were all blissfully 
happy to be sloshing about in the cool water. 
The cows stood knee-deep. The dogs swam 
after sticks. The pigs wallowed with the 
babies. A boy about twelve years of age, 
called Harry, seemed to be in charge of them 
all. 

Jim and I had on bathing suits, for we had 
been swimming earlier in the day. Moved 
by a queer impulse, Jim cried, 
**My wife will race you, Harry!'' 
Ten pairs of human eyes, the eyes of three 
dogs, two cows, and several pigs all seemed 
to be looking at me, as if to ask who I was 
that would dare to compete with the re- 
doubtable Harry. I wondered myself, for I 
am a poor swimmer. But since Jim had made 
the rash challenge there was nothing for it 
but to tumble overboard and do my best for 



The Dingbat of Arcady 99 

the honor of our house. Needless to say, 
Harry won the race. The children seemed to 
like us the better for having established him 
the more firmly in their esteem. 

We had stopped to swim. We remained to 
chat. We learned that there is still hope for 
the old English stock in Washington. The 
ten children were all sisters and brothers, all 
sturdy and happy. We wanted a picture of 
them, but had no films left for use in our 
little camera. However, they were all so 
pleased with the idea of having their photo- 
graphs taken that we promised to go back 
next day as photographers. We did. 

We took pa with his hair slicked and his 
jaw locked and ma in her best dress. We took 
the eldest daughter of the house, married 
already at eighteen, with her small son, about 
the age of her mother's youngest. We took 
Harry and Johnny and Tommy with their 
dogs. We took the youngest boy feeding the 
latest oflFspring of the pigs with a nursing 
bottle. We took the little girls, types of con- 
ventional pulchritude, with roses in their 
hands. Later we sent the finished pictures 
to the family, but probably we did not make 
them look beautiful enough for their own 
satisfaction, for never a word did we hear. 



loo The Dingbat of Arcady 

At the time, however, they all seemed to be 
well pleased. We had a pow-wow over how 
fine everybody had looked, over the incipient 
personalities of the baby pigs and the fas- 
cinating idiosyncrasies of the dogs and cows. 
Then we went up to the house for a visit. 
Pa gave us corn and cucumbers. Ma gave us 
butter and fresh white bread. 

And so the time passed, day after deeply 
satisfying day, until we knew in our hearts 
that it was time to go back again to the cares 
of this world and the life that we had almost 
forgotten in the contemplation of white waters, 
woodsmoke, and the Spirit that broods in 
wild skies and deep silences. We were strong 
in body and firm in mind again when we sold 
the dear old Dingbat of Arcady for twelve 
jars of canned salmon, and gave her over into 
the hands of our friend the salmon fisher- 
man. 

When Jim and I went out on that first 
trip we had wanted to forget people. Because 
we were poor we were failures in our small 
world. We had known conflicts and sorrows. 
It was as if we had wrestled in vain with 
the Hercules of the worldly mind. We were 
children of Antaeus, worsted in our first 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady loi 

encounter, going back to Mother Earth for 
strength. 

And in the woods we found strength. Trees 
did not condescend when they looked down 
upon us. Sometimes they let us feel that we 
were as tall as they. The maple did not 
trouble us by despising the fir for having 
another way of hfe, nor did the fir demand 
a dreary conformity of the maple. Trees, we 
learned, are too proud for vanity and give 
no time to wondering what others may think 
of their leaves. Nor does the tallest tree claim 
to be richer than a clump of clover. What is 
true of trees is as true, in appropriate ways, 
of sun and moon and stars, of earth and air 
and water, of all animals save only man. 

Yet, after all that is said, the people by 
the riverside with their tragedies and ro- 
mances, their avid need of sympathy, their 
blessed overflowing kindliness, gave us as 
much as Mother Earth ever gave. They gave 
us back our faith, our joy in our kind. To all 
with whom we broke bread and sang songs 
and told wild tales, to all who befriended us 
for a day or any hour, our salutations and 
our thanks! Amen. 

The cruise of The Dingbat of Arcady was. 



I02 The Dingbat of Arcady 

as I have already hinted, only the first of 
many adventurous excursions, the beginning 
of a new life not yet ended. To live near 
singing rivers is to remember them. To know 
the savor and tang of woodsmoke is to desire 
it always. 

A townsman gets little joy from the scent 
of woodsmoke, for he does not know how 
many varieties of smoke there are. But woods- 
men know that there are many fragrances 
in the burning of wood. Dead wood is not 
like green, and pine is not like maple to our 
noses. Smoke in frosty air smells sweeter 
than smoke in summer. But whether it be 
the spicy perfume of chaparral, crackhng sage 
and mesquite twigs from a Southern mesa, 
the rich odor of kindled pine, or the milder 
fragrance of oak logs, it is a symbol of all 
honorable things to the camper. Watching it 
rise in strands or puffs of blue and gray is 
like watching the whole history of the race. 
In the fading tissue of color I have seen altars 
and forges and hearths and pyres for the dead. 
I have seen Prometheus, dearest of Titans, 
and his children of this later age, still busy 
stealing for us holier flames than any that can 
be wedded with wood. 

Yet sometimes, even as a camper, I have 



The Dingbat of Arcady 103 

hated smoke because I have loved trees. Into 
what may small boys climb when there are 
no trees? Into what may small souls climb? 
Progress is with trees. Who will say what 
China might have been if she had not cut 
down the trees beside the Yangtse as we Amer- 
icans are now cutting down too many of the 
trees of America? Beauty is with trees. It 
was not an ugly superstition that permitted 
the poets of Greece to make lovely maidens 
into branching arbors. The camper who 
builds his fire where it can harm a single tree 
is a glutton of life and a murderer of loveli- 
ness. May the long, strong roots of my friends 
trouble his carcase when it is buried, and may 
he wait long for a beacon on the banks of 
the Styx! I think that man has little culture 
who has no intimate among the trees. 

My own best friend is the eucalyptus that 
came from Australia to California where I 
knew it. I have loved liveoaks with their 
mystic garlands of moss and their stubborn, 
stocky bodies, a veiled soldiery; I have loved 
the maples when I have tasted their honey 
and when I have slept at their feet. I have 
loved pines for their columnar power, birches 
for their refinement, and apple-trees because 
they have received me into their arms. I 



I04 The Dingbat of Arcady 

have listened mute with wonder to the grim 
and ghastly rustHng of palms in a sea breeze 
at night, and I have watched their dark, 
pointed fans outspread against a sapphire 
sky. These, for my imagination, are all 
beautiful. The eucalyptus is supremely beau- 
tiful. How good to strip off old moods like 
old bark; to stand before the world a spirit 
in white, uncovered truth like that; to lift 
one's self far away from the crowd and near 
to the sky, waving the newest buds of self 
to and fro worshipfully in wide, open spaces; 
to keep the green leaves of life alive through 
all the days of the year; to have dignity that 
is not forbidding and austerity that is not 
ungracious; to be remembered fragrantly! If 
I were a eucalyptus tree, I should ask for no 
companions. I should ask Fate to let me 
stand alone and lift my hands toward Heaven 
with untrammeled gestures. Let me have 
much space to move in when I am near enough 
to know the many thoughts of the sky! 

It was in California, with many a tall 
"blue-gum" and "red-gum" near at hand, 
that we built the successor to The Dingbat 
of Arcady. There was a strong family resem- 
blance between the two boats. In fact they 



The Dingbat of Arcady 105 

were as much alike as twin sisters. But the 
new craft was a little larger. Therefore we 
called her The Royal Dingbat, In her we 
spent long peaceful hours on the sun-dazzled 
waters of San Diego Harbor, traveling from 
the Silver Strand and Glorietta Bay out to 
the entrance where the Pacific pours in be- 
tween Point Loma and North Island. 

One afternoon we took our blankets and 
canvas and cooking utensils and left Coronado, 
hoping to make the extreme end of North 
Island, where the open ocean washes one side 
of a sharp angle and the harbor waters the 
other side, before night-fall. We expected to 
camp there and fish early in the morning 
when we knew that the tide would be turning 
toward land, bringing the fish in with it. But 
The Royal Dingbat^ like her sister ship, was 
not made to move quickly over roughened 
water. We stopped, also, at intervals, to fish 
for mackerel, of which there were many in the 
bay. Therefore it was late and dark when we 
reached our destination. The moon was not up. 

Jim cleaned the mackerel that we had 
caught and I cooked them over a fire of drift- 
wood flaming green and golden at the water's 
edge. Then we decided to get to rest at once 
that we might be up early. We took the long 



io6 The Dingbat of Arcady 

rope fastened to the stern of The Royal Ding- 
hat and carried it up the beach to the hne 
where vegetation begins. There we tied it 
to a stake firmly pounded into the sand so 
that our boat would not float away with the 
rising tide. Then we carried our blankets 
up above the tide line, also, and spread them 
out where the beach was lightly covered 
with growing things. 

Sand is said to be the least comfortable 
of all beds, but it was too delightful there 
under the open sky to remember that. In 
California the days are topazes, the nights 
sapphires. Lofty and serene the sky bent 
above us, showing sharp frost-points of the 
stars, like the diamond- tipped spears of gods 
fallen on a sapphire floor. The Milky Way 
was the record of some gorgeous rout and 
pursuit through Heaven. When a fog comes 
in, this light of sapphires and diamonds is 
magically beclouded. The blue becomes 
opaque, as if milk had been poured into an 
azure goblet. But on this night I remember 
that there was no fog. I remember the blue 
and white miracle above me and the chanting 
of the ocean with its voice of Titanic mother- 
hood and fatherhood. As I looked and lis- 
tened, I lost consciousness. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 107 

The next morning we were awakened as 
Homer must have been awakened very often, 
even in his blindness, by the rays of the un- 
troubled sun shining on us and on the "wine- 
dark'* sea, touching our cheeks delicately with 
a warmth unknown to night, caressing sensi- 
tive eyelids, waking the sleeping flowers and 
waking us. 

Then I saw that my bed had been made in 
Paradise. Around the edge of the old, brown 
camping blankets the wild beach primroses 
blossomed in golden health. And growing 
among them were pale purple beach verbenas, 
each fragile flower head borne upon a sticky 
stem and exhaling an intense and seductive 
perfume. Beside these blossoms the friendly 
garden verbena might seem blowsy and crude. 
Pale purple and clear yellow side by side in 
the dawn, blessing the bed that I lay on as 
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would have 
blessed it, surrounding me, head and hand 
and foot, drooping over my face as I looked 
up to greet the sun ! When the bed was made 
the night before I had not known. 

Jim got up at once and baited his line. 
Then, brown and bare-footed and glad in the 
early morning, he climbed over a ridge of 
slippery black rocks that jutted out into the 



io8 The Dingbat of Arcady 

rising water. He was fishing for the bass that 
wear sleek gray and for sculpin with heads 
as admirably grotesque as the gargoyles of 
Notre Dame. He sat on the cold, wet rocks 
with his bare feet curled up under him, watch- 
ing the tide come in, dreaming of the fish it 
ought to bring. I sat on the beach and watched 
him, liking the wistful boyishness that could 
forget the world for fish, the fugitive child 
that is in him and in all good men. I hoped 
Father Neptune would send hosts of the finny 
people to nibble at his bait. 

The prospects seemed to be good. Jim soon 
caught a good bass, held him up for me to 
see, strung him, and hung him in the water 
in a crack between the rocks to keep him cool 
and fresh. A little later he caught a sculpin 
and pulled up his string to put the newcomer 
on it. The bass had disappeared. Jim merely 
supposed that he had not tied it securely, 
so he put the sculpin in its place, more care- 
fully tied, and went on fishing. Presently he 
caught another bass. He lifted the string 
to put him with the sculpin. The sculpin was 
gone! How to explain it he did not know. 
He attached the second bass firmly to the 
string and was about to drop it into the water 
at his feet when, out of that water rose a 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 109 

great yellow head, yawning hungrily and show- 
ing rows of teeth, and a slimy, writhing, 
yellow body. It was a great sea eel, father of 
all the mythical sea serpents, reaching for 
the bass that Jim still held. It waved its 
lemon-colored head about threateningly with- 
in a few inches of Jim's bare feet. Jim tum- 
bled back from the edge of the rock very fast 
indeed. We were content with the one bass 
for breakfast. But I was disappointed in 
Father Neptune. 

It was on this same beach, on another day, 
that we first made friends with the gulls 
that keep the beaches clean. They are so 
common that it is easy to forget the thrilling 
passion of their flight, the rapturous poise, 
the circling power, the whirl and sudden dip, 
beak first into blue water. It; is easy to forget 
the wild and watchful eyes they have, the 
sleekness of their pointed heads, the strange 
pathos of their call. 

It was while we were eating our luncheon 
on the beach in the hot sunshine that one or 
two gulls halted in the sky overhead, tirelessly 
vigilant. One of them, seeing our food, 
swooped low, and flew over us, crying. Jim 
threw a small bit of bread on the beach about 



I lo The Dingbat of Arcady 

twenty feet away. The gull saw It, swooped, 
caught it and ascended again. Jim threw 
another piece a little nearer. Again the sharp 
eyes saw, the white body plunged toward the 
earth. Another piece we threw, still nearer. 
This time two gulls saw it and flew low to 
get our gift. We threw several crumbs. 
Several gulls appeared from nowhere in par- 
ticular to accept our offering. More and more 
crumbs we threw, sitting quietly there in the 
sun. More and more gulls came flying across 
the blue fields of Heaven to see what was hap- 
pening. In fine loops and circles they moved 
around us, swift and sudden and strong, five 
or six, a dozen, two dozen, then forty by 
actual count, then perhaps more. Their 
lusty wings beat the air about our ears. 
White and gray and cream-color, markings of 
straw and tan and slate-color, the sharper 
shades of feet and beaks, the preening and 
fluttering delighted us. Even as we had been 
hungry they were hungry. Even as we who 
were poor had to dare much to get our bread, 
they had to be daring too. The flap and clatter 
of their passing was the epic noise of their 
struggle for existence. The whirring rise of 
them was their victory. Their outcry was 
their poetic and social sharing of the feast. 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 1 1 1 

All this we could feel with them. All this we 
could understand. Evolutionists tell us that 
there may have been a time when bird life 
was near to our own. However that may be, 
life is one life still through all creation, differ- 
ing only in the degree of the fullness of its 
manifestation. 

The gulls dared to come very near us, yet 
with all their gallantry they would not suffer 
us to touch them, they would not even suffer 
themselves to touch us, although they flew 
so near that once a long wing-feather brushed 
my throat. I knew a child's longing to fold 
my two hands around one of those small, 
swift white bodies, to hold it and look straight 
into those wild, cold, courageous eyes. And 
on a later day this experience came to me, 
but then I was sorry and not glad of it after all. 

We had been trolling in the bay with a 
shiny tin minnow for bait. It flashed cannily 
in the translucent water. But the tide was 
going out and the fishing was poor. I caught 
nothing. So, while Jim pulled The Royal 
Dingbat slowly out of the harbor toward the 
open sea, I tied the trolling Hne and leaned 
back in my seat negligently, occupying my- 
self with my own profuse meditations. Jim 
saw a big gull swoop and cried, 'Took out!'' 



112 The Dingbat of Arcady 

But it was too late. The bird had dipped for 
the tin minnow and our hook held him fast. 

It was a moment of agony. This fair white 
creature of the sky had to be pulled across 
the water that we might loose him, his pride 
of flight hurt and humbled as his body was 
wounded. We got the line in as fast as pos- 
sible and, when he fluttered and struggled 
and beat his wings against the edge of the 
boat, I caught him and held him firmly, but 
as gently as I could, with my two hands about 
his throbbing body. 

We found that, fortunately, he had not 
swallowed the hook. It had caught firmly in 
the side of his neck when the tin minnow 
sank and bobbed under his unerring stroke. 
For a moment we did not know what to do. 
Jim got his knife and tried to get the hook 
loose, but it could not be done without tear- 
ing the gull's flesh badly. It was a small 
hook. We severed it from the minnow and 
from our line, thinking that so small a wound 
might heal, even without the removal of the 
hook, and leave the bird little the worse off. 
I unclosed my hands and he went free again 
with a great gladness. 

Our adventures were numerous in San 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 1 3 

Diego Bay. One of them was the oddest ad- 
venture I ever had with a fish. It will be 
believed only by those who have faith in my 
veracity. We were out one day in The Royal 
Dingbat looking for mackerel and small fry, 
fishing lazily. We caught little or nothing 
and grew tired of pulling the boat around. 
We decided to tie her to one of the big piles 
that marked the channel. Jim threw our rope 
around it loosely and then we lolled in the 
bow and stern, doing nothing, saying little, 
and absorbing the beauty of the sunset, 
crimson with delight In the distance beyond 
the channel's end. 

The mackerel line with which we had been 
trolling was baited with a fairly large hook 
and carried a heavy sinker. The sinker had 
behaved very well while we were moving, 
but when we stopped it carried bait and line 
straight to the bottom. However, our minds 
were not occupied with the thought of fish. 
We were too lazy to care. One end of the 
line was slack in my hand. It mattered little 
to me that the other end had gone to the realm 
of Davy Jones. Then suddenly I felt it rip 
through my hand, tearing the skin of my palm 
as my grip tightened and making a hot line 
across, like an electric current. 



1 14 The Dingbat of Arcady 

^ "A big fish! I can't hold him!" I yelled. 
Jim took the reel. The line sang over it madly- 
down to the last dry inch. Then Jim had to 
hold on. The fish held on too. The rope of 
The Royal Dingbat^ loosely coiled around the 
channel pile, slipped, pulled free, slapped the 
water. We began to move away from the 
pile, towed toward the open sea and the sun- 
set by some unseen power at the end of our 
slender mackerel line. It was incredible and 
ridiculous, but it was thrilling and there was 
no doubt about it. For a few moments our 
sense of wonder sharpened and deepened. We 
learned how strong a slender thing can be. 
A mere thread was drawing us toward that 
Paradisal glory in the West. Then, suddenly, 
the water broke ahead of us, a shark with a 
sallow belly and an ugly head leaped clear 
of the water for an instant, broke the little 
mackerel Hne, and disappeared! 

The electricity of such surprises darts 
through life in the open, making day and 
night golden, showing us the vivid interplay 
of hardship and adventure in the life of the 
spirit. Hardship in the world of wood and 
stream is the first restraint man ever knew, 
the most ancient form of discipline, the be- 
ginning of that knowledge of the law which 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 1 5 

will be made into good morals at last. Ad- 
venture, in the world of wood and stream is 
the beginning of that joy in the power of 
body and mind which brings culture; it is 
the nobly defiant impulse to live freely and 
take chances under the law; it is the desire 
for overwhelming beauty. If life had meant 
only hardship for the race, it would have 
been unbearable, and long ago the genera- 
tions would have perished of heartache. If 
life had meant only adventure, the beginnings 
of order never would have come out of chaos. 
The fortunate ones of the earth maintain an 
equilibrium between hardship and adventure in 
the making of days and years, knowing that to 
lose this balance is to fall away into death 
and that to keep it brings the fullness of life. 



Cvi] 



[VI} 

xyoMETiMES the day's adventure may be 
minute and fragile, a chance meeting with a 
flower. Flowers, like the abstract idea of 
beauty, are much abused in custom and con- 
versation. Our affection for them is lasting 
and sincere, but rather vulgar. No doubt I 
seem crude when I handle bloodroot or trillium 
or creamcups, if there be gods or fairies watch- 
ing or finer mortals with gentler hands. Our 
way of touching flowers is a revelation or a 
betrayal. 

Nor can we know them by possessing them, 
by having them in our houses. We might 
as well try to understand normal humanity 
by seeing it in prisons and hospitals. If we 
would know flowers, especially wildflowers, we 
must live near them. The flowers that do 
most for us are those that we never pick. 
We never see them fade. 

To walk in golden mustard eight feet tall 
by a California roadside while the petals and 
pollen shower bright gold on our heads and 
shoulders is good. To kneel on the mesa 
beside the tiny pink gilia that covers the earth 



1 20 The Dingbat of Arcady 

with bright patches after the rains, Hfting 
its plucky blossoms, the size of a nickel, on 
little thread-like stems about two inches long 
— that also is good. Better still it is to wander 
into some remote canyon and find the deep 
oracular phacelia that has pinkish, hirsute 
stems and leaves and a solemn face the size 
of a violet. People who have broken their 
bread in the sight of such flowers and taken 
their rest beside them are less likely to pick 
them. They have exchanged the lust of posses- 
sion for the desire of beauty. 

So have I passed a mariposa lily, an orchid 
stranger, simply crying out to Apollo to give 
them my blessing as a salutation to their 
loveliness, since I myself^ cannot speak their 
language. It makes me regretful to think that 
the poems made in their honor can never be 
translated for them. Yet, if I were to choose, 
I should rather have poems understood by 
people than by flowers. For flowers are beauty, 
nearly always, in their own persons, but 
people, who are rarely beautiful, must have 
beauty given to them. 

It would be difficult to tell of all my ad- 
ventures with flowers either in California or 
in those Eastern lands whither we have been 
carried by the mystic stream on which The 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 2 1 

'Dingbat first bore us. But because of these 
adventures my mind is full of colored gar- 
dens. My memory does not need the fields 
of mythological asphodel, but reaches to 
quiet earthy places where, in bright tufts of 
spore-bearing moss, I see shy, thin-stemmed 
bluets with petals pointing to the four winds 
and golden hearts like suns in the midst of 
skies. In the spring, while I am still working 
at my desk in the city, my spirit wanders 
at will through the uplands of New York 
where the cool arbutus creeps from under moist 
leaves, or through the fallows of New Jersey, 
while wild azaleas bloom. In summer, no 
matter where I may be, I can call to mind 
the heavy odor of the milkweed^s queer, 
reddish blossoms near level, dusty roadways, 
or the ecstatic perfume of the wild grape 
clambering over rocks. The sleepy look of 
red poppies in Devon is with me, the pungent 
whiff of the Httle, rusty, button-chrysanthe- 
mum, blossoming its best in forsaken gardens 
of our Eastern states. 

It is not merely that I remember these 
colors and fragrances, but that I remember 
them as they were in the morning, at noon, 
at night, redolent of joy in the new sight of 
the world, strong with the pride of lusty life, 



1 22 The Dingbat of Arcady 

or faint and strangely mingled with the scent 
of the moist, dark earth. 

Sometimes the day's adventure may be 
chance meeting with a bird. Jim and I had a 
most happy experience with birds in a pine 
wood in New Hampshire one summer. We 
were sitting under a pine in the silence that 
belongs to good comrades. We had tramped 
far that day and at sundown we were resting 
under the trees and dreaming dreams to- 
gether. When two people can dream dreams 
together, they do not need to talk. Perhaps 
because we were silent we heard from behind 
one of the trees a purely silver song. Jim, 
who knows birds better than I do, laid a 
hand on mine and a finger on his mouth to 
enjoin silence, but the gesture was super- 
fluous. I had no desire to speak. This song 
was to me, also, the punctuation of our dream- 
ing, for as commas and periods set intervals 
between words, bird-song sets intervals be- 
tween dreams. 

In a minute or two more we heard a sim- 
ilar song from another tree, a small flute out 
of Paradise. The first singer answered. A 
third called from in front of us. And then the 
first singer appeared where oblique rays of 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 23 

the sun falling on him showed a speckled 
breast and rufous tail. It was the hermit- 
thrush, himself and no other. Singing he 
walked among the pine needles, his comrades 
answering him. The other two joined him, 
presently, and perhaps a fourth was with 
him, but of that we could not be certain. 
They moved about before us and made their 
music without a thought of us, giving us their 
loveliest and most limpid singing. We hardly 
dared to breathe for fear of interrupting the 
recital. For ten or fifteen minutes we sat 
and listened with white awe upon us, and then 
their wings rustled and they were gone. The 
place where the rays of the sun had fallen on 
them was dark and empty. The song was 
sung. Our dreams were dreamed too. 

One other small memoir of aii adventure 
with a bird I must share. When it came to us 
we were living in the town of Superior, Wis- 
consin. It was cold there in winter. The snow 
sometimes lay four or five feet deep for weeks 
at a time on wild land near the town. The 
thermometer would fall low and chilly days 
as bright as diamonds would follow one an- 
other, clear and still. Sometimes we would 
borrow snow-shoes from our friends and go 
out of the town into the country to find the 



1 24 The Dingbat of Arcady 

lavender and rose-colored shadows on the 
unbounded fields of snow. We would take a 
cofFee-pot and coffee, a pound of bacon, a loaf 
of bread, and a pan to cook with. 

One day, when we had run or walked on 
snow-shoes all morning until we were ruddy 
with health and hot under our heavy clothing, 
we found a place to rest on a crust of hard 
snow in a hollow where winds did not bother 
us. We were surrounded by the protruding 
tops of bushes that must have seemed quite 
tall when the ground was bare. They bore 
tufts of snow upon them like white blossoms, 
the fair, false flowering of the winter. We 
broke some of these small twigs and made a 
fire with them. Jim found a dead branch]]oi 
a tree that provided enough wood for cooking. 
I filled the cofFee-pot with snow — as clean as 
air or water could be there in the wild out- 
of-doors — and when enough was melted I 
put in the coffee. We cut huge slices of bread 
and put slices of bacon, with dripping, be- 
tween them. Never did food taste more 
delicious than this crude banquet. Then, 
warmed by exercise and fire and food, we 
sat still for a while, resting. The fire burned 
itself away into the drift which the heat had 
melted. And then — 



The Dingbat of Arcady 125 

"Chickadee-dee-dee !'* 

Small brother chickadee, perched on one 
of the snowy bushes, wanted dinner. We fed 
him crumbs of our bread. A small and impu- 
dent beggar he was, hungry and jolly. His 
energetic throat said many a quaint grace. 

"Chickadee-dee-chickadee!'' 

Such a dark, fluttering little fellow seemed 
out of place and out of proportion in that wild, 
white, motionless winter world. But there he 
was, busy and very much alive. I can not 
look at the blanched beauty of snow in such 
a stretch of country without remembering 
his queer, dear, merry little song when he 
first cocked his head and looked at us. 

Sometimes the day's adventure may mean 
simply facing rough weather. My experience 
in the open has made me feel sure enough 
to dogmatize; there is no such thing as "bad" 
weather. Who are we that we should fasten 
that malevolent Httle adjective "bad'' upon 
weather that merely fails to serve our utili- 
tarian purposes and our self-indulgent ideas 
of comfort? Indeed, if beauty is to be judged 
by its rarity, a great storm may be the great- 
est weather and the most beautiful. By 
paraphrase the devout and daring person may 



I iG The Dingbat of Arcady 

well say, "Though it slay me, yet will I love 
it!" To like only weather that is blue and 
white and golden and placid is to be limited 
in the love of beauty. 

This may be the secret of the scorn, usually 
veiled, that men who have known Nature in 
all weathers, suffered her and dominated her, 
feel for the pale-eyed and pale-skinned crea- 
ture of comfort. However this may be, this 
I know, that they who can outface a storm 
and exult in it have a clew to the meaning 
of life which can help them to triumph, also, 
in the vicissitudes of the intellectual and 
spiritual experience. 

Considered quite apart from the damage 
it may do, a storm is supremely beautiful. 
Somebody told me this when I was a little 
girl and the thought came to me with a thrill 
of surprise, for it was a new gospel. Most of 
the people in my small world disliked storms. 
That one person made life richer for me by 
telling me the truth. I have two memories 
of storms that have remained with me long. 

One was a great wind storm on the prairie 
in the Middle West. It came after a long, 
still, sultry summer day, in the late after- 
noon. I felt the stillness deepen and strengthen 
around me like the self-restraint that hushes 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 27 

anger. Then huge clouds bunched themselves 
together in the West. I stood and watched. 
I saw a line of trees, a windbreak, far away, 
so far that I could not tell their kind. One 
moment they were perfectly still. The next 
made them toss their branches madly as if 
they were wild with grief or pain. In front of 
them a field of corn yielded to shadows and 
swayed as if some terrible hand had stroked 
each corn-stalk, bending it, crushing it to 
the very earth. The great wind was coming 
toward me, nearer and nearer. But I did not 
stir. I told myself that when it came I would 
lie down. It caught the near fields of grass 
and rang over them, and sang over them while 
the air around me was still and sultry. I 
was fascinated. A group of willows quite near 
me jerked their tops forward suddenly with 
the impact of that rushing gust upon them. 
Then they tumbled and tossed their branches 
about uproariously in the rushing air that 
took and tore them. The wind crossed the 
short stretch of grass between those trees and 
me and then beat against my face, my throat, 
my breast, my limbs, with cold and savage 
fury. My breath was blown back into my 
nostrils. My hair was ripped loose from 
around my forehead. My throat and body 



1 2 8 The Dingbat of Arcady 

felt sudden cold like the water of a trout 
brook in April. The invisible legions of the 
air pushed me back, back, back, step by step. 
I gave way before the pressure of their chilly, 
unseen, powerful hands. I fell upon my face 
and waited. Sticks and leaves from far away 
were blown down upon me. Even upon the 
earth, flat and humble, I could not evade that 
magnificent rage. It went bellowing over my 
head into the East. And then, as suddenly 
as it had come, it stopped. Rain fell quietly 
on a cool world and tears came into my eyes. 
The other storm that I remember was a 
thunder-storm at night by a riverside in 
Canada. Jim and I were lying in our tent, 
unable, for one reason or another, to get much 
sleep. Perhaps it was because Nature herself 
could not rest. The air was disturbed and yet 
stagnant. Then there came a heavy groaning 
and sudden shocks of distant sound like the 
heavy breathing of Vulcan and the falling 
of hammers on his anvil. We saw far lightning 
like the flying of sparks. The noise increased. 
Mars and Thor had been awakened over 
Scandinavia and Hellas and were hurling loud 
words at each other. They threw the lances 
of Heaven about and the lightning became 
frequent and livid. As each spear of light 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 29 

fell and broke in pieces upon the floor of 
Heaven we saw the jagged lines of fall and 
fracture. The earth under us seemed solid, 
but that floor of Heaven, on which those 
terrible figures trod, shook under them and, 
when they came to grips and wrestled, rocked 
with their power. Perhaps that is why we 
on earth saw a glory of dark trees suddenly 
illumined by lightning, with leaves that had 
been like black masses in the darkness sud- 
denly etched sharply upon a clear background, 
then blackened into vagueness again. Such 
a glory of splashing rain upon the vexed black 
surface of the river! Such a smell of sweetness 
in air that had been stale as fever! And then 
one great bolt flying, one barbaric splendid 
burst of crashing sound, as if the floor of 
Heaven had given way under terrible feet, 
as if one great god had hurled the other 
through the gap! After that, silence. Later we 
heard the booming of the forge of Vulcan and 
saw the sparks flying from it again. At last even 
that noise faded into silence, and we slept. 

Sometimes our adventures have been ex- 
cursions into the hearts and minds of our 
kind. One such adventure came to us when 
we were camping on the banks of the Tobique, 



130 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

a swift, bright tributary of the St. John, flow- 
ing through New Brunswick. The fishermen 
and guides who lived on the banks were kind 
souls. When they saw that we went in swim- 
ming every day they warned us against the 
water, saying that we would get "water 
poisoning" if we kept on. 

The river was fed by sweet springs and 
rivulets. Salmon and trout that will not live 
in foul streams were plentiful in it. Yet these 
men would not go in swimming for fear of 
being poisoned. We talked over their advice, 
and considered it, but the weather was hot 
and we decided to disregard it. Day after 
day we took our swim. We were not poisoned. 
Then came a very hot day. The men all took a 
chance, went in, and came out with fairer faces. 
Nobody, so far as we know, was ever poisoned. 
I hope we broke the wicked fairy's spell. 

One of these fishermen, an old man wise 
in the lore of the woods, who had brought 
down many a moose and bear in his time, was 
as exquisitely tactful, in his own way, as the 
hero of "A Hundred Collars'* by Robert 
Frost. Tact is supposed to be a sophisticated 
virtue — or vice — but this man proved that 
it might also inhere in the unlettered. 

He knew that Jim had been longing to 



The Dingbat of Arcady 131 

take a salmon and that he had had no luck, 
although the river was full of them. They 
could not be seen from the banks because of 
the swirling lights in the ripples. But when 
we climbed up into trees and looked down we 
could see long streaks of silver-gray against 
the light sand-color of the stream's bed. 

Came a morning when the old man took his 
old boat and his old rod and Jim's fine new 
reel and pulled out into a quiet part of the 
river where he sat, rod in hand, for several 
hours. Then a strike! He began to play his 
fish. He knew that Jim had been watching 
from the bank. He feigned difficulty. He 
beckoned as if he were calling for help. And 
so, while he played the fish back and forth 
and round about, Jim, in answer to the signal, 
put out from shore in our canoe, paddled 
up above the old man's boat, shipped his 
paddle, and let the canoe slide softly down. 
He got into the boat with the old man and 
pushed the canoe hard away to the right 
where he knew it would catch on a log boom. 
Then he pulled the old man's boat toward 
shore. When they stepped out into water 
thigh-deep, the salmon was still active, lash- 
ing and threshing his way through the *'poi- 
soned" waters of the river. 



132 The Dingbat of Arcady 

"Can you gaff him?" said the old man to 
Jim when he began to reel in. He must have 
taken hundreds of salmon in his time, but 
he pretended to be needing help. 

'TU try," said Jim, excitedly, "but I never 
have." 

"Mebbe you'd better take the hne, then," 
said the old man, putting the reel into Jim's 
hands and surrendering his catch. "I'll gaff 
him." 

He took the gaff-hook and waited while 
Jim reeled. At last, suddenly, when the salmon 
shot forward desperately between his very 
legs, he gaffed it. And in some inexphcable 
way Jim was made to feel that the catch was 
really his and could not have been made 
without his assistance. 

This same old man told us how to catch the 
trout and where. In tributaries of the To- 
bique, Jim caught a hundred and thirty-two 
in one afternoon. We shared them with all 
of our neighbors so that none were wasted. 
They were not large, but they were delicious 
aristocrats. 

Every camper has his own favorite way of 
cooking trout. We fry ours in olive oil. 
Bacon fat, generally used, is good, but over- 
comes the delicate flavor of the trout, so that 



The Dingbat of Arcady i ^2 

what the camper tastes is bacon. The sweet- 
ness of the trout can be savored perfectly 
when they are fried in oHve oil. First we take 
each freshly caught fish and clean it and wash 
it in clear water. Then we lift it up to let 
the sunlight bless it. Then, with sincere 
affection we dip it in a mixture of flour, corn- 
meal, pepper, and salt, and lay it in a pan 
in which the oil is already hot. We fry to a 
mild brown and serve with coffee and, if 
there be any at hand, with cress or sour-grass. 
Wild chives, also, cut up between slices of 
bread and butter, are very good with trout. 
Sometimes, as everybody knows, trout will 
not bite. Then the hungry camper is wise 
if he will fish for eels. Our kind old friend 
taught us that art. He bade us build a fire 
of driftwood near the water's edge, in the 
evening. Then we baited our lines with stale 
meat and fish scraps and threw them in. The 
eels, attracted to the shore by the light of 
our fire, took our bait almost at once. We 
hauled them out, each one a writhing, wrig- 
gling, twisting, squirming body, marvelously 
muscular and energetic, tying itself into slip- 
pery, oozy knots and loops. It was difficult to 
get the hooks out of them. Many had to be de- 
capitated. Even then they kept on wriggling. 



134 "^^^ Dingbat of Arcady 

After we had caught enough the woodsmen 
showed Jim how to skin them. The skin is 
worked loose at the neck in just the right 
way and then pulled off backward, like a glove. 
Even while this is going on the dead eel writhes 
and twists. Then we cut them into pieces 
three or four inches long and dropped them 
into a pail of salted water to stand over night. 

When frying time came we learned to use 
plenty of hot fat over a slow fire, to drop in 
the sections properly floured and to fry them 
until we were sure that they had been cooked 
too long. Then we cooked them even longer. 
Eels, to be good eating, must have patient, 
thorough cooking. When they have been well 
cooked they wriggle no more, but are firm, 
and sweet, and rich. 

But the joy of joys for the palate is Canadian 
maple sugar. It has the flavor of a whole 
forest in it and sings upon the tongue like 
many birds. To eat it at the end of a scanty 
meal is to swallow fairyland! 



[VII] 



[VII} 

©AYS and months passed and the mystic 
ripples of our lives carried us home into our 
own country and into the State of New York. 
There we learned what it is like to camp out 
of doors in the early spring when snow still 
blotches the dark earth of shadowed places 
with a waning and ghostly white. It was early 
in April, the Easter vacation, when we made 
our first spring trip for which all of our friends 
prophesied disaster. 

We were traveling in funny little Frankie 
Ford, this time, and were exceedingly proud 
of him as our first car although life had dealt 
hardly with him and his personal appearance 
showed the effects of stress and strain. We 
could truly say that he was far from his end. 
His radiator was puckered and wrinkled and 
he wore his top rakishly, but what a soul — 
what an engine — he had! We went on and on 
and he enjoyed it. 

When Jim and I go out on the open road 
it pleases us not to know exactly where we 
are going or when we shall get there. A 
destination is more troublesome than much 



138 The Dingbat of Arcady 

luggage. If we have one folded up with our 
blankets, we find it necessary to forego many 
a pleasant chat by the wayside. Therefore 
we usually leave our destination at home with 
our best clothes. They belong together. But, 
as it happens, we began this trip by traveling 
up the east shore of the Hudson toward Troy. 

For several days the weather had been 
mild and balmy. The willows were yellowing 
and the brush in the swamps reddening with 
the spring. The birds were returning for their 
season of mirth. But as we drove on past 
awakening fields and dreaming fallows it 
turned colder and began to rain. We crossed 
the river and turned south on the west side 
after purchasing a pound of steak in one of 
the villages so that we could be sure of some- 
thing for supper no matter where we might 
camp. The thermometer dropped and the 
rain changed to sleet. This was food for 
thought. Our good tent would bear any 
amount of water without leaking, but what 
about ice? We could not afford to let it be 
cut. 

We drove on, wondering what to do, fol- 
lowing perfect country roads through a dear, 
gray, chilly drizzle until we saw a tall, roomy, 
old-fashioned farm-house ahead of us, with a 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 139 

big barn near at hand. The place looked 
hospitable and wholesome. Some houses wear 
the auras of their owners. And by that time 
we were wet and chilled through. It was 
beginning to be windy. Jim went to the door 
of the house and asked permission to sleep 
in the barn. 

The lady of the house looked us over 
keenly. Then she invited us to spend the 
night in her guest-room. It was against our 
principles to accept that invitation, for we 
hold that camping is not merely for pleasure, 
but also for discipline. The camper who 
takes the soft way too easily will miss the 
hard joys of the road. Our camping con- 
sciences troubled us even in the thought of 
the comfort of a barn, but we satisfied them 
with the thought that we could not afford 
to spoil our tent. All this we explained to 
the kind woman in the doorway. She allowed 
us to spend the night in her barn. 

But she would not let us use our primus 
lamp for cooking. She took us into a lean-to 
where she had been ironing all afternoon and 
where a good fire still burned. There she 
bade us get warm and cook our supper. It 
was luxurious. We fried our pound of steak 
with some onions and made cocoa. While 



140 The Dingbat of Arcady 

we were feasting on this already plentiful 
fare our hostess brought in a jar of her best 
preserved cherries and offered them to us 
for dessert. They were carefully pitted, rich, 
winy, delicious. She also provided a dozen 
big apples that had come safely through the 
winter in her cool cellar. We ate our bountiful 
repast with glee and, after tidying up the 
room, went out to the barn. 

It was clean and airy. We took a few 
forkfuls of hay over into one corner, spread 
our blankets thereon, and, as we drifted off 
to sleep, listened to what Hamlin Garland 
astutely calls the "comfortable sound*' of 
"bosses chawin' hay.'' Never was I more 
intimately friendly with horses! 

A few days later I learned how strong the 
friendship between man and horse can be. 
We had stopped and asked permission to put 
up our tent in the brookside meadow of a 
fine, clean-looking farm. The farmer was a 
big, wholesome, child-like man who gave per- 
mission rather than be surly. But he had 
misgivings. While he was doing his evening 
chores in the barn-yard, he would walk over 
to the fence that separated it from the meadow 
and take an occasional uneasy look at us. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 141 

Would we steal his chickens? Would we set the 
woodlot ablaze? He was probably wondering. 
I made a haphazard effort to be agreeable. 

"You have a fine horse T' 

The trouble left his face and he grinned 
broadly. Perhaps we were all right, after all, 
if I knew a good horse. It was more than a 
good horse to him. It was his treasure. 

"Guess how old he isT* said he. 

I did not know how old a horse ought to 
be to be right, so I was politely evasive. 

"Fifteen years. Born on the place, he was. 
I raised him from a colt. He's a wonder. 
Come here, Peter." 

Much to my surprise the horse walked 
across the barn-yard to his master as a dog 
would have done. 

"Kiss me, Peter.'' 

Peter promptly covered the farmer's face 
with the wettest of wet kisses. Inwardly, 
invisibly, and inaudibly, I shuddered. Just 
how much will mankind endure for affection's 
sake? 

"He'll follow my wife around, asking for 
sugar. He'll go to the back door for it. He 
don't know anything but kindness. Nobody 
else ever had him. I ain't ever let him work out. 
He's one of the family, he is. He's human"! 



1 42 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

I could not help wondering how many 
human beings in the worid are like that horse 
in that they know nothing but kindness! But 
as Blake says, 

" The beggar's dog and the widow's cat. 
Feed them and thou shalt grow fat." 

I did not grudge the intelligent beast his 
happiness. I could not help praising him. 
That established us in the regard of the farmer, 
his wife and his children. Cool milk from the 
milk-room was offered to us and sweet apples 
from the bin. 

We drove through New Jersey and turned 
toward Delaware Water Gap. A day came 
slightly overcast with clouds. We looked for 
an early twilight. But it was already upon us 
when we began to look for a place to spend 
the night and it was dark before we rolled 
along to a curve where a narrow, rutty dirt 
road turned off from the main road into a 
strip of light woodland and fallow beside a 
swift and narrow stream. We stopped, cooked 
our supper, and pitched camp in a hollow 
near it. 

In the morning, when I opened my eyes, I 
saw that we had rested in a bed of dog-tooth 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 43 

violets. Looking out across the earth with my 
eyes on a level with it made them seem like 
an army of yellow elves coming to storm the 
citadel of my mind. I capitulated at once. 
When we arose that morning there was a 
blessing on us and we knew it. We made 
coffee, fried bacon, and toasted bread joy- 
fully. Then, before we went on, we covered 
the remains of our fire with water, earth, 
and moss that no black ashes might make an 
ugly spot in that perfect place. 

We went on toward Delaware Water Gap, 
driving rapidly and living frugally with our 
bodies, but for our spirits it was to be a day 
of miracles. At noon we stopped on a country 
road that crossed a brown-shadowed stream 
which looked as if it might be a happy home 
for trout. We had only tea and bread and 
butter for luncheon, so, while I prepared it, 
I told Jim to try a cast or two. At the first 
cast he pulled out a fine trout which we 
promptly fried and shared. Again we were 
blessed. We went on happily. 

Early that afternoon we found the trout- 
stream for which we were looking and, as a 
light haze descended on the land near it, 
between the little hills that guided the flowing 
of it, we pitched camp in a meadow still clad 



144 "^^^ Dingbat of Arcady 

with last year's grass, now being lifted by 
the spring's new green blades. The trout- 
brook made promises to us all night long 
of what it would do for us next day. The 
mild air gave us slow, deep breathing. Again 
we were blessed. 

Morning came warm and sparkling. We 
took our tackle and trudged up-stream, fishing 
as we went. Above the meadow where we 
had camped the stream ran through wilder 
and more troublesome country, over mighty 
boulders, between rough and jagged banks 
covered with dense undergrowth and brooded 
over by stalwart trees. We found a clear, 
delicious spring and drank deeply. 

After a long walk we were hot and came 
upon a pool where it would be just possible 
to swim a few strokes. Below it were two 
great rocks and a plunging gush of waters 
between them. We went in swimming. Cold, 
cold as ice recently melted, but stinging sweet 
to the spirit that loves hardship, was that 
clean water. Shuddering for a moment when 
the water first clashed upon us, then rising 
to feel the kindly warmth of the sun, we were 
blessed once more. If death should be like 
that. . . . 

I sat enthroned between two gaunt rocks 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 145 

with water rushing headlong across my shoul- 
ders. It seemed as if such cool, clear energy 
must wash away not only the fevers and 
foibles of this world, but even faults and 
flaws. In that chilly dazzle of flying sunlight 
and leaping water I could not think ill of 
any one, not even of myself. When I changed 
my wet clothing for dry I was clean of heart. 
And on the way back I picked long streamers 
of ground moss and little vines newly budded 
out, a few sprigs of arbutus, and one blood- 
root, the wonder-star of April. We caught 
few fish that day, but we were content. 

At supper-time it was cool and a light wind 
blew up. The wind grew bolder and colder. 
By ten o'clock as much of a gale as the little 
valley could well hold was blowing over us. 
For once the tent would not stay in place over 
the top of our car, or anywhere else. It was 
made of light material and we were afraid 
it would be torn to ribbons if we left it up. 
We took it down and tucked it over us flat 
on the ground. The wind ripped and tore at 
it even there and sometimes it sHthered across 
our faces. The night grew colder and colder. 
Jim let the water out of Frankie Ford's 
radiator for fear it might freeze. A film of ice 
showed on the water in our drinking pail. 



1 46 The Dingbat of Arcady 

The ground under us stiffened and then froze 
hard. Yet under the blankets and the tent, 
wrapped in our warmest clothing, we were not 
cold. 

Rising in the morning was another matter. 
When I went out to make a fire the gale blew 
this way and that. We were obliged to set 
our small primus stove inside the car in order 
to cook on it. I washed hands and face in 
the stream in which I had been swimming 
happily the day before, and the cold of wind 
and water now made my fingers stiff and numb 
so that I fumbled badly with the frying-pan 
and the coffee-pot. But when I was once 
warmed through by a good breakfast I got 
joy of that gusty morning, such joy in hard- 
ship as I had never known before. Truly, I 
had been blessed. 

These things, frost and wind, realities of 
the physical life to which we had gone back 
for a time, were they not fit symbols of the 
stresses of the life that we had left? These 
things, frost and wind, had been conquered 
by man, the indomitable, long ages before 
my birth. By claiming our share in that 
heritage of conquest might we not conquer, 
also, in the end, that world of stone and 
steel realities wherein men and women of 



The Dingbat of Arcady 147 

to-day face dangers and difficulties more subtle 
than any that their forefathers knew? Per- 
haps it is here that the first lesson begins. 

So it has been for me. So may it be for 
others. For it is an inexpensive blessedness 
that I have found to save my soul alive in 
me when I have taken to the highways and 
waterways that lead to the shrine of the first 
faith. At this shrine I have found bravery 
for my fear, and wisdom for my doubt, and 
life to do battle with life again. 

Never do I return from these adventures 
in the open with Jim without longing to go 
out on another. I shall dream of going again 
and again until the last time — then, at last, 
to remain. As my flesh grows frail with the 
growing strength of my spirit, I should like 
to rise slowly in the long, blue brilliance of 
night, and seize the horns of the crescent 
moon and jump over it, between them, as a 
child jumps over a rope. Once over it, and 
in the Milky Way, I should like to fling all 
my sins and sorrows into the Great Dipper, 
and hsten until I hear them clink upon the 
bottom of it. Then I should like to find all 
the time that I have lost. I should like to 
float out among the stars, seeking a new 
beauty. 



148 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

One great joy of the road is not knowing 
what acquaintances we shall make or how we 
shall make them. Getting acquainted with 
people is a dullard's adventure if you know 
all about them ahead of time. But if you must 
learn the meaning of a human being from the 
poise of the head, the flash of the eye, the 
locking of the jaws, the behavior of the fingers, 
and from the individual life, communicable 
and yet inexplicable, which animates all of 
these, then a meeting is an inviting hazard. 
With letters of introduction we may meet 
Mr. and Mrs. John Brown Jones Smith. 
Without them we may find Socrates in a 
general store at the cross-roads, Le Penseur 
on a lonely hill, and Saint Francis and Ther- 
sites tramping side by side along a dusty 
road; we may even have the good fortune to 
hear Confucius talking to his disciples of 
*'poetry, history, and the up-keep of courtesy.'' 

We enjoy the complex simplicities of pio- 
neering in the hearts and minds of our kind. 
People who seem quite commonplace to them- 
selves and to their neighbors shine for us 
with a light well known before there were 
candles, the ancient light of romance. For 
us they wear the plumes of knights, the caps 
of goblins, the haloes of saints, the garlands 



The Dingbat of Arcady 149 

of delectable sinners, without ever knowing 
that they are clad in more than serge or 
gingham. And sometimes the light is reflected 
upon us, who seem quite commonplace to 
ourselves save in moments of elation. What 
could be more delightful to a couple well- 
advanced toward middle age ? 

Once, when we were driving through New 
Jersey in Frankie Ford, the ramshackle and 
rakish, we were allowed to feel the 'radiance 
of this glamour upon us. It was late summer 
and the road was dusty. Great wreaths of 
dust whirled past us through sultry air, 
dimming our eyes and making our hair 
gritty. As for Frankie, the gray of the dust 
was so thick on him that only clairvoyance 
could have told his true color. Jim subdued 
him to about ten miles an hour and we rolled 
slowly through a small town, looking for a 
place where it would be possible to stop and 
prepare supper. Ahead of us, as far as we 
could see, dust was thick over the road and 
gray as death. By all the laws of hygiene 
and aesthetics it would be wrong to stop 
where we were for the purpose of eating. I 
looked about me anxiously. 

Then I saw, at one side of the road, a rusty- 
colored, benevolent, old-fashioned house. A 



1 50 The Dingbat of Arcady 

stubby hedge enclosed a lawn on which a hose 
was playing. On a veranda, in a chair tilted 
back against the wall, sat an old gentleman 
in rusty black. His feet hung limp without 
touching the floor. His head was sunk on 
his breast. I gave little thought to him then, 
however, for I was looking at the lawn (how 
good it would be to sit on!) and at the hose 
(how good it would be to get under the 
spray!). I stepped out of Frankie. Said I to 
Jim: 

"rU ask that old gentleman to let us eat 
supper on his lawn.'* 

Never before had we asked such a privilege. 
We had cooked our meals in meadows and 
orchards, but never on a lawn near a home. 
I went quickly for fear of losing courage. 

*Tardon me, sir, but we have been traveling 
all day and are tired. The road is dusty. May 
we eat our supper on your lawn?** 

The chair tilted forward and the old gentle- 
man sat up. His spirit came back from that 
mazy region unexplored by youth to which 
old people go when they are alone. He took 
a good look at me and kindly amusement 
flickered in his eyes. He got up. 

*'Why, yes,*' he said; "come along in, come 
along in.*' 



The Dingbat of Arcady 151 

He beckoned to Jim, who whirled Frankie 
about and brought him to a stop beside the 
stubby hedge. The old gentleman hurried 
over to get acquainted with him. He was 
alert now, and twinkled with activity and 
talk. 

"Campin', eh? Well, now that's certainly 
fine. Nothin' better 'n campin'. Got supper 
all ready, have you?" 

"We have bread and butter,'' said I, "but 
if you would let us light our small gasoline 
stove — it won't hurt the grass — we could cook 
beefsteak and onions. . . ." 

"Steak and onions! Just the thing! Nothin' 
better 'n steak and onions. If I hadn't had 
my own supper, I'd just ask you folks to let 
me in on it." 

He was as excited as if he were giving a 
party. 

"Mama," he called to one of the windows 
at the back of the house, "Mama, let these 
folks in and give 'em a chance to wash at 
the pump on the stoop." 

We came out with clean faces and clear 
eyes. We sat down on the cool lawn. We 
lighted our stove and I filled a pan with steak 
and onions. The old gentleman walked around 
us, smoking a pipe, talking volubly between 



152 The Dingbat of Arcady 

puflFs, and apparently delighted with his 
queer, uninvited guests. He told us how he 
used to go camping when he was a young 
man. But he had come home, now, home 
to what David Morton calls "the rooted 
certainties." 

'If my wife had liked it, we might have 
kept it up,'' he would say. That is what many 
men tell us when they talk with us of our 
adventures. And the house-bound women say 
wistfully, "If it wasn't for the children . . ." 

While we were still eating, one of our host's 
old cronies stopped beside the stubby hedge. 

"Havin' a picnic, Joe?" 

With something of the air of a Barnum, it 
must be admitted, the old gentleman hurried 
over to explain. He made a good story. 

"These folks have traveled all over the 
world like this," he said, "and they're great 
campers." 

When the time came to pack our things 
and put them in Frankie he did not want us 
to go. 

"I have a grove the other side of the house," 
he said, "pine-trees. Nothin' better 'n pine- 
trees. I wouldn't ever let anybody cut 'em 
down. You could camp there as well as not. 
Just come and take a look at 'em." 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 53 

Our vacation was over and we were needed 
at home. Otherwise we might have stayed. 
But although we could not do that we went 
and admired his ''grove/' half a dozen brave 
old trees, strong symbols of the joy of his 
youth, reminding him of crisp dawns and clear 
evenings near the earth. I wondered how 
many of his neighbors knew what those pines 
meant to him. Perhaps not a one. He had 
let us know because we could understand. 
He all but begged us to stay overnight. When 
we had climbed into Frankie again, we left 
him standing beside the stubby hedge, waving 
his hat. Said he to Jim: 

*'Come again if you're passing by this way 
and stay as long as you like. / like to meet a 
character like you!'' 

And so we pass mankind in review on the 
open road and are reviewed ourselves. Each 
newcomer is a sentry who cries out to us to 
halt that he may learn our untold braveries, 
our hidden renunciations, our latent gracious- 
ness from a personal radiance evident to him, 
unsuspected by ourselves. That he can find 
these things in us is a cause for great good 
cheer. That we can find them, also, in him, 
is a reason for the glad laughter that rises 
out of faith. 



[VIII] 



[VIII] 

ff^UEN we told people in Oregon and Cali- 
fornia that we were going back to New York 
and that we expected to camp out in the East, 
they said: 

"You won't find the farmers there like the 
ones here." 

But we did. And when we told New York- 
ers that we were going to tour and camp in 
England, they said: 

*'You won't find the farmers there like the 
ones here." 

But they were wrong. My opinion is that 
if we sought camping sites in the blue fields 
of heaven, the farmers there would welcome 
us as they have everywhere on earth. Per- 
haps they would offer us ethereal butter and 
honey from "the angels' pale tables" of which 
Vachel Lindsay tells. However that may be, 
I can vouch for the fact that the English 
farmer is as friendly as his kinsman in our 
own country, and that is saying a good deal. 

It was in early summer that we began 
to explore the English countryside in a motor- 
cycle combination called Rover Chug-chug. 



1 5 8 The Dingbat of Arcady 

Rover was a veteran. He went into the war 
in 1 9 14 and did more to win it than any 
profiteer ever did. As a result he was old, 
and often very tired. But not all of the moral 
force had gone out of his engine. He was 
plucky and would die hard. If he sometimes 
behaved with all the flirtatious uncertainty 
of a Don Juan, that only made him the more 
attractive. We bought him in London for 
more good American money than we could 
get for Frankie Ford at home. All motor 
vehicles brought enormous prices in England 
after the war. We removed the upholstered 
seat from the sidecar, which looked like a 
bathtub for a giant's canary bird, and we 
folded our good brown tent and put it where 
the upholstered seat had been in the place 
which I was to occupy. We made our blan- 
kets into a neat, compact brown bundle and 
strapped them on behind. Between the sidecar 
and the cycle we swung a big aluminum pail 
which held our small primus stove and a 
few cooking utensils. Behind Jim's seat on 
the cycle was a package of clean clothing. 
This load and our two substantially healthy 
selves we asked poor Rover Chug-chug to 
pull. In spite of the fact that he had only 
one cyhnder to his name, he usually did it. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 159 

With this equipment and in this manner 
we set out, going down into the southwestern 
counties. Of course we saw the great cathe- 
drals and reverenced their grandeur and their 
grace. Of course we saw Bath and Exeter 
and Salisbury and Winchester. But of these 
great piles of sternly worshipping stone let 
other and wiser tourists tell. We spent most 
of our time with the simple folk whose fore- 
fathers had built these mighty churches to 
be a memorial of their kind while their civil- 
ization endures. The first farmer with whom 
we made friends was a man of Somerset, who 
allowed us to pitch our tent in his field for 
two days and nights while Jim overhauled 
the weary engine of Rover Chug-chug, 

This farmer had a voice as smooth and 
rich as heavy cream. He had hair like sun- 
light on waves of ripe grain. He and his wife 
belonged to the Salvation Army and saw little 
of the comforming villagers who lived near. 
They were as pious as Father Aeneas. And 
they were very kind to us through the two 
long rainy days that we spent with them. 
After we had made camp and while I was 
getting supper the first evening, they came 
over to see us. 

The farmer was a man of few words, which 



1 60 The Dingbat of Arcady 

was too bad, for his voice should have made 
him a bard. A good lyric would have been 
ravishing in his mouth. But all he said was, 
*'Oh-ay.'* He made it mean several things. 
By a subtle variation of sound he could ask 
a question with it or give an answer or make 
an exclamation. He could explain his uni- 
verse with it. He hardly needed gesture. 

His wife, who called me "Dearie" at once, 
was a devoted mother of half a dozen children. 
They all lived in a tiny cottage like four low 
walls hugging a big chimney. It was set in a 
tiny yard walled away from the meadow. 
Inside the wall hollyhocks and roses crowded 
close upon peas and cabbages. Outside, where 
we camped, was the free pasture of the big, 
clean, silky cow and of her small, absurd, 
spotted calf. A pool in the meadow sheltered 
salamanders — **hevets" the children called 
them. At least, that is as near as I can come 
to spelling out their pronunciation. They 
thought that these salamanders were poison- 
ous and were amazed to see Jim, who knows 
something of biology, take them up in his 
hands. 

When they learned that we loved wild 
things they took us for a walk in their emerald 
meadow and showed us the sweetest and 



The Dingbat of Arcady t6 I 

happiest thing they knew, their treasure of 
treasures for the time. On a grassy slope the 
farmer knelt down and thrust his arm into 
a hole which we should never have noticed. 
With a look of shy pleasure he pulled out 
a wild baby rabbit, then another and another, 
till each child was holding one little furry, 
frightened, cuddling creature. We passed 
them around, gently stroking their brown, 
downy ears. Then the Somerset man care- 
fully tucked them back into their nest in the 
earth. They would not be there long, he 
said. Poachers would get them. 

His wife gathered a handful of homely 
meadow flowers for us and a bunch of delicate 
knot-grass which, she said, would be pretty 
in the house all winter. And on our way back 
to the tent, she stepped into the tiny cottage 
and brought us out a roll of ghstening butter 
on a broad green leaf. When we sat down to 
supper on the turf that evening and saw that 
butter beside our stout English loaf, we felt 
that the only proper grace was the desire to 
deserve it. We slept one more night in that 
meadow in Somerset and in the morning said 
farewell. The good mother cried out to us: 

"Let us know if you come by again and 
hl'U put you h'up." 



1 62 The Dingbat of Arcady 

Her husband, standing at the gate and 
smiHng, said, 

"Oh-ay." 

It was good to know that we had been 
welcome guests. We were glad, too, that we 
had freed the family from the fear of sala- 
manders. Every fear lost is a faith found, 
one step upward on the rungs of the golden 
ladder that climbs into joy and peace. Per- 
haps there was a spirit in that pool with the 
'*hevets'* crying out, even before our arrival, 
in words like those given to the river god by 
Beaumont and Fletcher: 

" Do not fear to put thy feet 
Naked in the river sweet; 
Think not leech, or newt, or toad 
Will bite thy foot when thou has trod: 

"Nor let the water, rising high. 
As thou wadest, make thee cry 
And sob; but ever live with me 
And not a wave shall trouble thee." 

Leaving Somerest behind us after two rainy 
days, we set out to see Devon of the red 
earth and the lovable sea, Devon of the nar- 
row immaculate lanes and old churches, Devon 
of the brown thatches and yellow plaster, 
Devon of the wild red poppies and the creamy 



The Dingbat of Arcady i ()2 

sheep. And we saw her in all her dear, domes- 
tic beauty, ate her rich cream and her ruddy 
strawberries, and, in the course of time, 
arrived at the foot of Porlock Hill where, in 
so far as I was concerned, the driving trip 
ended and a walking trip began. 

Unlike Rover Chug-chug^ Porlock Hill had 
a reputation. It was said to be one of the 
steepest hills in England. We had been ad- 
vised to take a long, roundabout road because 
the short and direct way up would be im- 
possible for Rover, Even the longer and easier 
grade, we were told, would be difficult. It 
would be necessary to lighten the load for 
Rover. He could carry the luggage or he could 
carry me. Alas, the luggage could not walk! 

"I'll have to go up Porlock Hill alone," 
said Jim. I'll wait for you at the top where 
the road begins to go down again." 

He started the engine and away he went 
with Rover, I plodded along uphill on a per- 
fect road which rose steadily, winding around 
the shapely hill, past hundreds of line old 
trees. As I walked Christina Rossetti's lyric 
of the hill and the road came into my 
mind. 

"Does the road wind uphill all the way? 
Yes, to the very end." 



1 64 The Dingbat of Arcady 

The proud old symbols pleased me more than 
ever before. I liked the idea of ascending 
to some far summit of the spirit. It seemed 
a wiser and a truer symbolism than that in 
Burns' lovable *7ohn Anderson, My Jo, John/' 

On I went. Alone I reached a height that 
looks down on the sea that England loves. 
So steep was that hill that the sea, far below, 
seemed high at the horizon, as if it were 
tipping itself toward the land. It was calm. 
The color of it wavered between jade and 
slate, a gray-green mystery. I moved away 
from the ledge where I had been standing 
and nearer to my friends the trees. I think 
I learned why the ancient Israelites were 
forbidden to worship in groves and high 
places. Perhaps they make the spirit proud — 
or dizzy. 

Then I wondered why a glimpse of the 
ocean from a hill meant something new to 
me in England. I had often looked down on 
the superb Pacific from the mountains that 
form the crescent-shaped coast line of Santa 
Barbara. The majesty of those mountains 
would have humbled Porlock Hill. I had 
looked down from them with joy, but not 
with this strange, new stirring of the heart. 
Why was it? 



The Dingbat of Arcady 165 

I think that while I was Hving out of doors 
in England I may have been unconsciously 
homesick, sometimes, for the wild beauty of 
my homeland. In England man has reigned 
over nature for generations and reigned 
nobly. The land has been used and loved 
and subdued to a quiet loveliness. But 
America, wherever there is no ''Main Street" 
(our conquest over nature?), goes hand in 
hand with grandeur from zone to zone and 
parallel to parallel. We have scenery whose 
elemental beauty is amazing enough to be 
perilous if we were not somewhat insensitive 
and deeply interested in soap, tobacco, and 
pickles. Just as an Englishman might be 
stirred by the sight of English flowers in an 
American garden, so, I think, I was stirred 
by the elemental beauty seen from Porlock 
Hill. It meant home. 

After a little more walking and thinking 
I reached the top of the hill and found Jim 
and Rover in good spirits and willing to go 
on. We drove on to Lynmouth where we saw 
the things all tourists see and took a good 
look at the river flowing out into the calm 
ocean of jade and slate. After that we were 
obliged to separate again. 

Lynmouth is built at the foot of a high 



1 66 The Dingbat of Arcady 

and perpendicular cliff. On top of the cliff 
is the town of Lynton. Jim and I could have 
gone up into Lynton together in a lift which 
operates between the two towns, but the lift 
could not have taken Rover Chug-chug, It 
is always despicable to desert a good friend, 
and on this occasion it would have been un- 
thrifty also. Jim set out on a meandering 
road through the hills with Rover, I rose into 
Lynton on the lift and awaited them there. 

In due season Jim and Rover and I all met 
again. One of us had a long drink of gasoline 
and the other two had luncheon in a queer 
little boarding house in a side street because 
we were not courageous enough to cook or 
eat our own on the streets of a town, nor 
presentable enough to go to a good inn. After 
luncheon all three of us went on our way, 
chugging out of Lynton on the road to II- 
fracombe. For a short time Rover behaved 
admirably. Then we came to another stretch 
of uphill going. He wheezed and stopped. 

"You'll have to walk,'' said Jim to me. 
*'ril drive on toward Parracombe until I come 
to a place where the road is level or slopes down. 
Then we'll go on to Ilfracombe together." 

Jim and Rover left me and disappeared 
around the bend. Afoot and light-hearted. 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 67 

but a little weary, I trudged along in the 
general direction of Ilfracombe with Parra- 
combe as my first goal. 

"Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 
Of labor you shall find the sum." 

The words of Christina Rossetti went with 
me. I walked and walked. Although I had 
memorized that lyric in my youth for sheer 
love of it, I found out that day what it means 
to learn a poem ''by heart." The thought 
and music of it haunted me. No matter how 
fast I walked I could not walk away from its 
analogies and suggestions. 

"Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?" 

I wondered what I should do if night came 
and found me alone on that strange road as I 
must ultimately be alone at night on the road 
of Christina Rossetti. Numerous cars and 
wagons passed me there in the afternoon, 
but I did not meet my fellow wayfarers. 
Nobody was presumptuous enough to scrape 
an acquaintance and give me a lift. The 
English are exceedingly well bred. 

The road, Hke most roads in England, was 
beautiful. It rose from a deeply cleft, wooded 
valley into the skyey regions of what Cali- 



1 68 The Dingbat of Arcady 

fornians would call a mesa. I had not gone 
far before I heard a rumbling noise rolling 
through the valley. A brooding greyness 
covered the edge of the upland. A thunder- 
storm was coming. Nevertheless, I was not 
alarmed, for I felt sure to the very marrow 
of my American bones that it would not be 
the peer of thunderstorms that I had lived 
through and rejoiced in at home. English 
weather grumbled along from day to day 
(when it was not smiling genially), but it 
rarely did anything rough. 

The rain began to fall slowly and heavily 
in big drops like the discouraged tears of 
gentlemanly angels. I had no raincoat. I 
was wearing a short woolen skirt, a cotton 
jumper, and a heavy, gray, sleeveless sweater. 
My arms got wet. My shoes felt the slippery 
mud of the road take on a new slipperiness. 
I walked and walked and still that road be- 
haved like the road of Christina Rossetti and 
went uphill all the way. No Jim could I see. 
I wondered whether a leprechaun had stolen 
him. There was nothing in the world to do 
but keep on walking. 

The slow shower became a vigorous rain. 
Mobs of plebeian angels must have been 
weeping the plentiful tears of some heavenly 



The Dingbat of Arcady 169 

sorrow. My sleeves stuck to me. My feet 
slipped and slithered in the mud. My cheap 
round felt hat was like a filled sponge on top 
of my head. On I went. 

After a while I heard the slow pad-pad of 
a horse behind me. I looked back and saw a 
farmer's high cart pulled by a sensible old 
nag and coming along at a decent jog-trot. 
The farmer and his wife were sitting on a 
broad, high seat up in front under a mighty 
umbrella. There was room under it and be- 
side them for a third person. I looked up 
appealingly as they passed. They looked like 
kind people. Surely they would invite me to 
take the empty place. But evidently it was 
not the thing to do and nobody English ever 
does anything that is not "the thing." They 
passed me by. 

Then I was desperate. We arc bidden to 
ask that we may receive. We are also told 
that the biggest price we can pay for any- 
thing is to ask for it. Both are wise counsels. 
I realized that I must ask for a lift. I ran 
uphill after that cart. I overtook the old 
horse on a steep part of the up-grade. Then 
I oflfered to pay the farmer to take me as 
far as he was going in the direction of Parra- 
combe. 



1 70 The Dingbat of Arcady 

As it happened, he was bound for that 
village. He and his wife kindly helped me up 
into the empty place beside them. As soon 
as I recovered the breath lost in running 
after their horse, I explained my eccentric 
behavior. I put all of the blame on RoveVy 
who had refused to carry me. I told them 
that there had been no stage to take at that 
time and that it was necessary for us to 
get to Ilfracombe as soon as possible and 
that Jim would be waiting somewhere on 
the road. 

We jogged and we jogged. I was more 
comfortable on the high seat under the mighty 
umbrella than I had been on the muddy road. 
We went on silently for a time. Then an 
idea entered into the mind of that farmer 
and fell from his lips in innocent speech. 

"Your husband wouldn't be running away 
from youj would he?" 

With humor and devotion I rallied to the 
defense of my good man. 

"It seems a bit queer/* said the farmer. 
"Does he often leave you hke this?*' 

"Only when Rover can't carry me and 
we have to get ahead," said I. "The bun- 
dles can't walk and I can. At home in 
my own country my husband and I camp 



The Dingbat of Arcady 171 

together often and I always try to be a 
good sport/' 

He probably thought that I had chosen 
a strange way of being a good sport, but 
like the other English, he was polite about 
it. Probably the thought that I was Amer- 
ican and therefore peculiar just by nature 
and without being able to help it was a com- 
fort to him. I suppose that if he is ever 
asked to describe Americans, something of 
the wife-deserter will enter into his description 
of the American man and something of the 
queer lady pedestrian into his description of 
the American woman. 

Having imposed myself upon them, I did 
my best to be agreeable. I told them how 
much I liked Devon, how beautiful England 
seemed, and what New York was like. But 
never could I divert their minds enough to 
prevent them from wondering where my lost 
husband might be. The English mind seems 
to be immobile. 

**You're sure he was going to Parracombe?'' 
they would ask. 

And I would assent, although I was be- 
ginning to wonder whether I should ever find 
him again. Much to my relief I did spy him 
at last, just before the hill sloped down 



172 The Dingbat of Arcady 

to Parracombe. Under a big tree at the 
opening of a lane the old brown tent was 
spread loosely over Jim and Rover. They 
seemed to be keeping a weather eye out 
for me. I squealed with delight and was 
about to dismount, but Jim astonished my 
kind acquaintances by shouting to me to re- 
main where I was. 

"IVe had trouble with the brakes," he 
said, "and Fve just fixed them. They say 
that the grade into Parracombe is dangerous, 
ril go through the town with Rover and meet 
you on the other side.'* 

The farmer and his wife seemed glad 
to ascertain that I had a real husband, 
albeit a queer one, and they agreed to 
take me through the town. I asked what 
I owed them. They said that it was against 
the law for them to accept anything for 
driving people. It could not be done with- 
out a license. I thought earnestly for a 
moment and then asked if they had children. 
They had. 

"Would it be against the law for me to 
give them a present?'* 

That would be quite legal. 

**Well, then, I must ask your help about 
it/' said I. *1 do not know vour children 



The Dingbat of Arcady 173 

and can not guess what they would hke. 
Please buy them something in Parracombe 
and give it to them from me/' 

All alone again at the first fork of the road 
beyond Parracombe I waited for Jim. There 
would be no more hills. I looked down on 
the quaint, friendly little town which I had 
left behind and thought of all that must be 
left behind before reaching the inn at the top 
of the hill of Christina Rossetti, — towns, 
homes, gardens, friends, and Jim. I listened 
to the dry whispering of a scythe in a field 
near by where a sturdy Englishman was 
cutting grass. It was an eternal music. It 
would go on when I had entered the inn that 
nobody can miss. I was glad of that. . . . 
The storm had gone and the sky was opal- 
escent with the fires of sunset. The coming 
of night was in the coolness of the air, but 
the day was not yet over. When Jim and 
Rover found me I was dreaming of a day 
and a hill and a road beyond time and space. 
But I had farther to go here. 

" Will the day's journey take the whole long day? 
From morn to night, my friend." 

We spent many a beautiful night camping 
on the English commons, treated always with 



1 74 The Dingbat of Arcady 

courtesy and kindness by all classes of people 
with whom we came in contact. Nor did we 
find anywhere a dirty, unsightly, or unpleasant 
bit of country. Every inch of rural England 
that we saw had been loved so well that it 
had been kept undefiled. May travelers say 
as much for our country in the future. They 
could not say it now. 

One of the happiest of our camping places 
was on Sevenoaks Common on the Pilgrims' 
Way to Canterbury. It was there that I 
made friends with an old beech tree. It was 
in this manner. 

In England summer days were opalescent, 
softly clouded and shot through with light 
fire. Life burned and glowed. The holly- 
bushes had put out their new leaves, deli- 
cately thorny, shiny, almost translucent, and 
quite unlike the thick, opaque leaves we know 
at Christmas time. The wild berry vines were 
blossoming. The ivy had sent out an apostolic 
succession of new and sensitive shoots along 
the climbing ways and over the ground. The 
bracken was uncurling. The trees were in 
new leaf. Many of them were not perpen- 
dicular, but ran at sudden angles one with 
another and bent in several ways. In the 
midst was the great beech. In front of it, at 



The Dingbat of Arcady 175 

a short distance, so that we might look at 
it, we put up our tent, while the soft sunlight 
of an English afternoon fell away to ghostly 
yellow among all the mingled greens and 
made a silent symphony of the colors of rest. 
We ate our supper and sat idly watching 
day change to night. 

The night was a fairy corridor cut in moss- 
agate, misty and magical, through which we 
moved haunted by whims and strange wisps 
of thought born with our bodies and souls 
of the experience of our race. I watched the 
shadows deepen around the old beech, think- 
ing how the young Shakespeare might have 
slept out in this same country, under such 
trees, or how Chaucer might have walked on 
this very common many a time, picking the 
daisies that he loved. The tree became a 
stalwart Shakespeare, a portly Chaucer, a 
symbol of the mellow greatness of the English 
mind at its best. If the leaves of it had changed 
suddenly to the crimped white ruff worn by 
him of Avon, and if he had spoken to me of 
the "darling buds of May,' I should not 
have been greatly surprised. If the branches 
of the beech had suffered metamorphosis and 
become the smock that Chaucer wears in his 
portrait in the National Gallery, I should 



1 76 The Dingbat of Arcady 

have taken it, I think, as a matter of course. 
I should have waited to hear him say, 

"O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she 
In which that love upgroweth with your age, 
Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee. 
And of your herte up-casteth the visage 
To thilke god that after his image 
Yow made, and thinketh all nis but a fayre 
This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre." 

A Httle later we decided to make a trip to 
Edinburgh and left London for the North in 
Rover Chug-chug, We spent the first night 
of this trip on " 'Am Common" (Ham pre- 
ferred) near Richmond, by advice of a kind 
Bobbie, only to discover next day that it 
had been against the law for us to put up 
our tent there, or to run our little motor- 
cycle combination into a space between clumps 
of bushes. Nobody knew that we had done 
it, however, and we were not molested. Nor 
should I have known that it was against the 
law if I had not seen a sign next day denying 
the privilege of camping to all gypsies and to 
other peculiar people like teachers and poets. 

The bushes around us were furze — what 
the friendly poHceman had called "fuzz- 
bushes." They were merry with golden 
bloom. And never, even in California hills, 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 77 

have I heard such a full chorus of bird song as 
woke on Ham Common that morning. Cuck- 
oos called out loudly, as they rarely do with 
us, that summer was "icumen in." The larks 
and other English birds that we did not know 
tossed carols into the air as fast as a fountain 
tosses spray. It was a jubilant festival. 

Leaving Ham Common behind we went 
straight North toward Doncaster, driving fast 
over the long and level roads. It was late in 
the next afternoon when we saw a modern 
bungalow of our own American kind at the 
edge of a quiet meadow and near a small 
grassy grove. Jim left me with Rover and 
went and asked permission to put up our tent 
in that grove for the night. It was most 
courteously granted. More than that, while 
we were pitching camp the owner of the 
bungalow came over to see us, bringing four 
fresh eggs which he offered us for breakfast 
and for which he would not be paid. He 
lingered a moment, chatting diffidently, but 
with interest, and then he said, 

"Pardon me — I hope you won't think me 
indelicate — but you have been driving all 
day — wouldn't you like a bath?" 

It was too good to be true! The English 
are often accused of stand-offishness. Here 



178 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

was an Englishman offering the kindest 
hospitahty of his home, his "castle," to two 
strangers, foreigners at that, who had come 
to camp upon his property straight from the 
open road, with no introduction but the 
smiles upon their faces ! 

We went on northward through Yorkshire 
and prepared to cross the moor and enter 
Scotland by way of Carlisle. The rain fell 
on us day after day and all the way, but we 
were reconciled to that when we saw the 
most wonderful sky that we had ever seen 
from the high moorland between Bowes and 
Brough. On the day when we made this 
trip it was still raining, or, let us say euphem- 
istically that there was a Scotch mist. We 
had eaten luncheon at Greta Bridge, at The 
Morritt Arms. It was good, but cold, and 
came to an end with some Wensleydale cheese 
as deliciously flavorous as one of Edwin 
Arlington Robinson's lyrics. From Greta 
Bridge we drove on in the rain to Bowes 
where the road began to wind slowly uphill 
for six miles, and then down again for another 
six miles to Brough. 

As we moved upward with all the slow 
speed our heavily laden Rover Chug-chug 
would make we looked at that sky. It was 



The 'Dingbat of Arcady 179 

full of brooding life. Valhalla might have 
been just behind it. Around us was the moor, 
rolling and dipping in long, undulating lines 
away to the right, covered with scrub and 
weeds of kinds new to us. Across the road and 
on the edge of the moor the sheep, omni- 
present in England, were grazing, their creamy 
wool heavy with moisture. Strange, crested 
moor birds stood near the road, hunched up 
meditatively on one leg. As we passed they 
rose deliberately into the air, crying plain- 
tively. In the valley to the left grim stone 
walls, not unlike those in New England, but 
with a smoother masonry, cut the green land 
into sections. Here and there great wisps of 
mist had fallen upon them and blotted them 
out. Cool air everywhere, moist air every- 
where, disturbed air blowing this way and 
that all around us! Over all this the sky! 

The sky was purple as heather and gray as 
age and streaked with amber and rose like 
an apple and troubled with wildness like the 
light in the eyes of a cat. It changed from 
moment to moment, hue sliding into hue, 
tone falling upon tone, form melting into 
form. Great columns of white cloud fell down 
and broke upon the floor of the earth, or 
were hidden by rising walls of amethyst. 



1 80 The Dingbat of Arcady 

built by invisible fingers. Dusky castles with 
blue battlements reared themselves before our 
eyes and stood a moment in evanescent gran- 
deur, then disappearing in long, vertical lines 
of swiftly falling silver, upon which the sun, 
from some secret place, tried in vain to look 
out. Movement upon movement, glory upon 
glory! 

I have said that we were wet and cold and 
tired. That may have been one reason why 
we kept silence at first as we drove up the 
winding road. But he is no lover of beauty 
who can not forget his body momentarily 
when his soul is feasting. We had also another 
reason for silence — we were enjoying what 
was too thrilling for speech. We drove on to 
the top of the grade. Then, when the road 
tipped down again, a miracle happened. 

We had forgotten cold and weariness and 
the unending rain that beat upon our un- 
sheltered faces and ran down our necks. We 
had forgotten words. We had forgotten 
thought. Without words or thought or any 
tune that I can remember we began to sing. 
And as we went swiftly and smoothly down 
into the valley toward Brough we were sing- 
ing exultantly, with none to hear but the 
creamy sheep and the vari-colored moor birds 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 8 1 

and that wild sky and the unknown gods who 
traveled those hills invisibly. 

This, I think, was taking a step forward 
in the knowledge of the absolute and eternal 
beauty which we can never know fully in one 
finite life, though it is that for which our best 
selves hunger and thirst. To the believer it is 
one phase of God's existence, this beauty, and 
one way of his manifestation. It is at once a 
celestial dream and a deep certainty. It is that 
which we may approach and touch though we 
may not encompass it. 

What is given us is the privilege of looking 
on small gems split from that perfect jewel of 
unnumbered facets, of cherishing these small 
particles of beauty in our lives and of telling 
others about them. This blessed holding and 
sharing is one fulfillment of destiny. It is what 
great poets, great artists, great seers have 
always done. It is what Httle poets, little art- 
ists, little helpers of mankind should hope 
to do. It is a high and honorable task. 

The chilly rain went with us all the way 
into Scotland. We kept fairly dry at night 
in our tent. But in the daytime we rolled 
over wet roads with the heavens open above 
us. Our most intimate garments were thor- 



1 8 2 The 'Dingbat of Arcady 

oughly wet most of the time. We were in 
this condition one afternoon soon after cross- 
ing the border when we came upon a small 
cottage near the road. A grove near it looked 
like a good place for a camp. Jim got off 
Rover and asked the people who lived in the 
cottage whether we might have permission 
to put up a tent there over night. The little 
woman who came to the door could not give 
the permission herself, but sent Jim on to a 
larger house to ask, with assurances that our 
request would probably be granted. 

For one reason or another I was left stand- 
ing in the middle of the muddy road, dripping 
at every crease and angle of my apparel, 
waiting for Jim to return. I had not been 
near a fire for three days and nights. While 
I was thinking about this sordid fact a young 
girl came to the door and called to me. 

"Mother wants you to come in and get 
warm by our fire." 

I went in gratefully and set my stiff feet 
on the fender. My clothes began to steam. 
White vapor arose from my coat. I told the 
pretty, dark-eyed woman that we had come 
from far away New York. She thought it 
was in Canada, near Vancouver. Her knowl- 
edge of the United States of America was 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 83 

limited^ but her knowledge of human needs 
and longings was full and rich. Quietly and 
charmingly she set the table for tea, talking 
with me pleasantly all the time. I thought 
that, since it was tea time, it might be polite 
for me to suggest departure, but as I was 
framing a proper speech, my hostess said: 

"Does your husband take an egg to his 
tea?'' 

They had been getting tea especially for us! 
They had had their own earlier. Cold and 
wet as I was the very thought of tea came 
like a shock of swift delight. The thought 
of such kindliness, too, made it difficult to say 
'*Thank you" gracefully enough. They were 
purely and beautifully hospitable and had 
no intention of being paid. And such a tea! 

I had had tea in London drawing-rooms 
with Lady This and Lady That, and I had 
enjoyed meeting clever and charming people. 
It had been very good tea, too, with the 
daintiest of thin bread and butter. But my 
Scotch friends, who belonged to one of the 
oldest and most romantic of the clans, had 
several kinds of bread and butter, scones, 
several kinds of cake, and a wonderful rhu- 
barb tart. We might drink as many; cups of 
tea as we wanted, and we did. Then also 



1 84 The Dingbat of Arcady 

there was the friendliest talk in the world, 
talk of monuments and sights to be seen in the 
neighborhood. 

By the time tea was over the rain had 
stopped — or the mist had cleared. We took 
leave feeling warm and jolly and pitched our 
tent in the grove. In the evening our Scotch 
friends came to see us in camp. They admired 
our tent, our bedding, our primus lamp for 
cooking, and funny little Rover Chug-chug, 
Then they sat down under the trees for a 
talk. 

The man of the house, who had not been 
present at tea-time, had come with his wife 
to see us. They had brought the two youngest 
children, a boy about ten years of age and 
a girl somewhat younger; lovely, healthy 
children, shy as young deer. It occurred to 
me that the man of the family might have a 
good voice in his big, broad chest. I asked 
if he could sing and he admitted that he could 
a bit. Jim thereupon agreed to sing an Amer- 
ican song for every Scotch song our host 
would give us. They took it turn about most 
of the evening. Jim sang "Dixie," "Old 
Kentucky Home'' and "The Star-Spangled 
Banner" which they had never heard. The 
braw Scot sang plaintive, sentimental bal- 



The Dingbat of Arcady 185 

lads, many of them quite new to us and 
quite delightful. One was about a coy lassie 
who said to her eager lover, 

"I canna, winna, mauna buckle to!" 

I told our Scotch friends that the vulgar 
American equivalent for "buckle to" was 
"hitch up/' which amused them mightily. 

When he noticed that we understood the 
words of his songs, our friends asked us how 
it happened that we could understand their 
songs since we did not speak just as they did 
and came from far away. I told him that 
educated Americans all read Bobbie Burns. 
He was amazed and delighted. 

When he had sung everything he could 
think of himself he turned to his son and heir 
and bade him sing for us. At first young 
Robbie said, "I winna.'* Then he said, "I 
canna." But after much coaxing from his 
pretty mother and a firm command from his 
sire, Robbie sang, at first shyly, then delight- 
fully, with all the unimpassioned clarity and 
grace of a boy's soprano. 

When the Httle family went home down 
the quiet road, and we withdrew into the 
old brown tent I felt that there was still 
much blessedness to be told of mankind to 



1 8 6 The Dingbat of Arcady 

mankind. Such kindness has often been 
shown to us on the open road. I hope we 
have not abused it. I hope other campers 
will not. 

As a mere poet certain things would be 
permitted to me that are considered unbe- 
coming in the wife of a teacher. For instance, 
I seldom curse. But if I were to make up a 
curse for campers who return evil for such 
good things given to them, it would sound 
something like this. May fire fail them in 
need and may springs be tainted in the lands 
where they travel, and may poison ivy cling 
to their ankles, and may burrs catch in their 
hair, and may thorns tear their cheeks, and 
may snakes sleep in their beds, and may the 
woodtick bury itself in their flesh, and may 
the mosquito and the black-fly buzz near 
them even unto the end of eternity! 

Or, if I were in a better mood, if iniquity 
were far from me, I might make, instead, a 
blessing for all good campers who give joy 
for joy on the highways and waterways. It 
would be like this. May sweet fountains 
quench their thirst and may scented fires 
warm them; may clovers kiss their feet and 
daisies crown their heads; may the rustle of 
the brown thrasher wake them, and may they 



The Dingbat of Arcady 1 87 

hear hummingbirds at noon in the hedges, 
and may the dragon-fly flash bright before 
them by day and the firefly at night when 
they follow the old trails of the open world! 

These are my memories, the fruit of a new 
life not yet ended. But I have thought of 
the end. The thought of it came to me once, 
not tormentingly, not even sorrowfully, after 
our return from England, when we were 
camping in a cosy hollow at the top of a hill 
in New York. It' was an autumn night and, 
as we lay still in the old brown tent the smoke 
from our dying fire scented the air. Death 
became grandly inevitable in my mind, as 
in actuality, and it was not altogether un- 
lovely. 

To give back to the earth the body broken 
by life's hardness, to let it be dissolved again 
to feed the roots of upstanding trees and 
through the roots the fruits of them — that 
did not seem terrible in the night. I ought 
to be glad, I thought, to be renewed in such 
beauty. To let the flesh become a rainbow 
would be good. Perhaps many years later, 
I told myself, young people glad of that into 
which I had been translated, would come to 
this very place to enjoy, with senses more 



1 8 8 The Dingbat of Arcady 

acute than mine and with a finer under- 
standing, all that I had known and loved. 

To scatter abroad over the world the separa- 
ble parts of my spirit, sparks freed from 
that indivisible flame that is myself, like 
red leaves in a wind — perhaps that would 
not be altogether tragic either. My dreams 
and deeds, capable of mutation and com- 
bination through some splendid chemistry 
unknown to me, might yet be immortal and 
indestructible in the world that I have known 
and loved. Facing the firm realities of rest 
upon the rugged earth had enabled me to 
face the final reality of which we know little 
save that it is real for us all. 

These are my memories. They have faces 
as glad as morning, as profound as night. 
Out of my life they look back at me with cheer 
and warning and prophecy and comprehension 
and belief. And over and over again, silently 
but surely, they cry out to one another, 

''Gloriar 

^'Gloria in excelsis deor 












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